Word Up Review

Right off the bat, this game annoyed me. Well, not the actual game itself, but the fact that you couldn't skip the introduction. Being impatient, waiting for the game to actually start was a waste of time. After the introduction ended, though, the game seemed to be the typical anagram game where you scramble letters to make different words. WRONG! It is very important to read the directions to the game! Making the mistake of not reading them will cause you frustration. The object of the game is to make words from scrambled letters, but the letters also have to be adjacent to each other on the square board. It is very frustrating playing and wanting to use a letter that is not adjacent, and not being able to use it, but that adds to the challenging aspect of this game.
There are three modes in this game: Strategy, Arcade, and Vanilla.
The strategy mode is not timed, making it a lot more simple, but also a lot more boring. You get as much time as you need to make the amount of words needed to pass the level (level 1 starts at 15). What puzzled me about this mode was that I thought it got easier as the levels progressed, because after each level, the board got bigger, making the amount of letters go up. More letters equals bigger words, which makes more points. This mode was the most boring, but it was also the only mode I was able to succeed in.
The Arcade mode holds the same concept as Strategy mode, but it is timed. The timing doesn't seem very fast, but once you get into the game, it seems as if time ends. A con of this mode is you basically get the time to make as many words as possible, there's no incentive. Once the time is over, the game's over.
The Vanilla mode was very stupid. There was one button on one of the word tiles that "swirled" all of the surrounding letters around. The letters didn't change, they just moved spots. While playing, it seems that the swirling of the letters rarely helps in the formation of more words. In fact, most of the words I made in that mode didn't use the swirling letters at all.
This is a very challenging game that seems to be based on luck, but can probably become easier with skill and practice, but in my opinion, stay away from this game until you have completely mastered a simple anagram game.