In a surprise to no one, I like word games. (I offer Lex.Games, Cryptograms by Lex.Games, and Tile & Error, which are all the kinds of apps that word game nerds get intrigued by.)
I recently stumbled across Retrogram, and it’s fun as heck, with deliciously retro visuals. It’s from Australian developer Sim Saens, and it’s just lovely. The look, the sounds, the feel, the gameplay — the aesthetics and the fun are top-notch.
The app consists of two core word games: Spellotron and Wordway.
Spellotron will feel familiar to anyone who’s played The New York Times’s Spelling Bee: You get seven letters, and form as many words as you can that are spelled with any combination of those letters — inclusive of the always-required center letter. The gameplay closely matches Spelling Bee, and that’s a good game, so that works out great.
Wordway feels like a new mechanic to me, and I’m a big fan. You see two words, one across the top of the grid, the other at the bottom. Your job is to form valid crosswords that extend from the top word to the bottom word — using only the letter tiles that those two words are composed of.
I want to be better at Wordway than I am, but I enjoy playing it even when I’m flailing a bit. (I do better when I start from the bottom and work my way up, for whatever reason.)
You can play both of the games within Retrogram for free — but you only get today’s puzzles. Want the archive and all the puzzle packs? Subscribe for $30 a year or $5 per month.