Tick-Tock, beat the clock…once you start you just can’t stop, as EA brings the popular word game, Boggle to the iPhone and iPod Touch arena. But does it measure up to the real board game?

Review
For those unfamiliar with Boggle, you shuffle 16 six-sided dice, each imprinted with letters, in a tray that holds the dice in a 4-by-4 grid. You must find words containing 3 letters or more in sequences of letters on adjacent dice. You can go up, down, left, right, or diagonally. Three minutes is the allotted time for each turn.

There are three game modes: Classic, which sticks to the three-minute rule; Advanced, which lets you set your own time limit, features “Portal Cubes” that swap first and last positions when a word is formed, and has a “Panic Flip” that lets you find words using a new roll of the dice in the last 20 seconds of the game; and Self Score mode, a sandbox mode in which you play by your own rules and score yourself however you want.

Boggle makes good use of the iPhone and iPod touch’s accelerometer. Shaking the device at the start of your game mixes the dice, which hop around for a moment before they settle into the tray.

To make a word, you simply touch the letters and a circle will appear on the letter. An arrow will appear once you touch the next letter to indicate the order of the letters you tapped and a bar at the top of the screen displays the word you are forming with these selections.

Once you’re done, you double tap the final letter again to create the word. If it’s in the Boggle’s dictionary, you’ll be given points and a “ding” will sound. The screen will flash and your word will fly out from the top of the screen and is added into the list of words on the left side of the screen. If you make a mistake while you’re tapping out a word, just retrace your steps in reverse order by retapping the dice. If you’ve formed a word that Boggle does not recognize a “honk” will sound.

It is sometimes helpful to rotate the tray 90 degrees to get a better perspective of a word you may have missed before. To do this you just put two fingers on the upper right and lower left hand corners of the virtual tray (where there are arrows pointing in a clockwise direction) and turn.

Once your time runs out in Classic mode, Boggle shows the total word list for that particular puzzle, with the words you’ve made highlighted in green. A small map of the game board is included, with each words circled on the dice, so you can see where they were in case you missed them. You also can replay the same puzzle over again if you want to try to get more words, or you can play a new game.

There is an achievement screen that shows you statistics on how much you’ve played, the longest word, what letters you use most frequently, best words and so forth. You also get to see a gallery of in-game achievements you’ve tallied.
The graphics are wonderfully laid out and combined with the minimal in-game sounds, such as the shuffling of the dice and a honk or ding at the appropriate time, makes Boggle for the iPhone and iPod Touch comes close to playing the board game for real. Should you prefer to listen to your iPod collection, there is an in-game option to select them as well.

I was rather disappointed by the game’s multi-player mode. Instead of using realtime multiplayer, you can only challenge your friends through email. When they open up their emails and click on the link, it opens up the Boggle game on their iPhones and attempt to beat your score. This may be another flaw as it doesn’t even tell you if they did. I would like to have seen the Connect with Facebook option they included with their Scrabble game as a means to challenge people. There is no ‘pass and play’ option, so Boggle is at this point is strictly a one player game.

Recommendation
Boggle is a great game if you’re a fan of word puzzles. If you don’t mind playing solo, then by all means, you should buy the game. It is available at the iTunes App Store for $2.99 and is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch running OS 2.2.1 or later.

Check out Boggle’s gameplay on the video below.

Photos

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