I have a love/hate relationship with word games. The love comes from them being the perfect sort of fit for the bite-sized bits of free time that mobile gaming can fill in so well. The hate part comes from word games requiring me to use my brain. That’s not always a bad thing mind you, but sometimes I just want to zone out and match gems or make paperclips, you know" Not do a bunch of thinking. Plus I have the type of brain that must stare at a jumble of words and make certain I’m forming the absolute best word possible out of the given letters. I will do this for as long as it takes. People do not like playing Words Against Friends or Scrabble with me. It’s a curse.
Anyway, one word game that has spent far more time on the “love" side of things for me has been Zach Gage’s SpellTower ($2.99). Released going on ten years ago now, SpellTower was a pretty simple and straightforward idea for a word game that was executed to near perfection, like most of Gage’s work. In its main mode you were presented with a screen full of random letters with your job being to clear as many of those letters as possible by creating words and utilizing various special attributes of the board. The second main mode of SpellTower sees you starting with a screen that’s partially full of random letters, with each word you make raising the board from the bottom by one row. Make as many words and score as many points as you can before your board of...