Sometimes a game has a concept that, even if the overall experience is a bit rough around the edges, is clever enough to suck you in. That’s how I feel about this week’s pick Phrased Out (Free) from GLHF Entertainment. We’ve seen a lot of examples of a developer taking a tried and true gameplay mechanic and then peppering in some light RPG elements to make for something really unique. Crosswords, Sudoku, and of course match-3 have all done this sort of thing before. Phrased Out takes the classic “Hangman" word-guessing mechanic and dresses it up with a compelling progression system to create a really clever and entertaining little game? with a few caveats.
You’ll run through progressively more difficult battles with enemies where your offense is guessing a word or phrase from one of a number of different trivia categories: Video games, comics, movies, science, and many more. You have a limited amount of time to guess the word as well as a limited number of times to guess a letter. Guess correctly within those parameters and you’ll move onto the next battle, and win enough battles and you’ll clear an area and move onto the next. It’s pretty straight forward “Hangman" gameplay.
What makes Phrased Out so cool is all the various upgrades, power-ups, special abilities, achievements, and more that spice up that core gameplay loop. You can increase a number of stats so you have more chances at guessing letters,...