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Leaderboards are already in, but there’s a need for achievements to mark things like fully clearing the board in Tower mode. Also coming are Game Center achievements. These four modes offer a variety of satisfying play styles, and it sounds like Zach Gage has plans for more to come. It’s tense, yes, but not every move has the potential to be fatal. But this is a cathartic mode after playing Puzzle for too long. Except, of course, you still need to weigh the potential of your moves to leave those orphaned towers. Rush mode, on the other hand, must be played at top speed. Almost inevitably you’ll be stuck with one or more towers of single, orphaned letters, and as those add up it gets harder and harder to make a move that won’t end your game prematurely. Since every move you make adds a new row to the board, you have to consider your moves very, very carefully. In Puzzle and Extreme Puzzle, though, this tension is ratcheted up to the nth degree.
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At least you don’t need to worry about making mistakes - there’s no penalty for words that don’t work. But can you just leave towers of letters standing there, unused? It’s beyond me, so each move I make is a balancing act between finding good, high-scoring words, and ensuring I don’t leave too many orphaned letters behind. You can just accept that you’ll find a number of words, and then you’ll hit the “done" button and wipe your hands of it. Tower mode can be played casually, certainly. It sounds as though only Rush mode puts any pressure on you, but this is one of the tensest word games I’ve played. Rush mode adds new rows over time, putting you on the clock. Extreme Puzzle mode follows the same rules, but requires longer words faster and more often. Puzzle mode adds a row to the board each time you make a word, and if any column hits the top your game will end. Tower mode gives you 150 letters to earn the best score you can. Those rules will carry you through SpellTower’s four game modes, which change up how the board is presented. Finally, uncommon letters like Z, J, Q and X clear their rows if they’re used in a word. You can’t make the same word twice, and if a letter has a number on it, it needs to be used in a word of at least that length. Words that are five letters or longer clear letters all around them.
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You can make a word as long as it’s in the game’s dictionary and it’s at least three letters long. The tutorial is only a handful of screens expressing a handful of simple rules. SpellTower isn’t bogged down with complicated rules or conditional abilities. And if that were all there was to it, this would be a yawn and a skip. You can trace in any direction, loop diagonally back on your path, and make words of any length past two. Presented with a grid of letters, you spot a word and trace a path through its letters to select it.
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We’ve all played any number of games that make use of SpellTower’s main mechanic. Those of us who fit in the Venn diagram intersection of iPad owners and word game fans benefit - SpellTower is elegant, clever and fun. Now App Store superstar Zach Gage ( Unify, Bit Pilot, Halcyon ) has thrown his hat into the word game ring with SpellTower. Every few weeks a new genre standout arrives, ready to tide you over until the next big hit.