I would like to assume there aren’t many competitive arenas where I’d lose to a five-year-old child. Contests such as General Knowledge, Long Jump, Curling and Wrestling are all areas where I reckon I’d have the edge. However, I fear the five-year-old champion of FastWord, the new competitive word puzzler app, new and out now for iOS. A wordsmith prodigy, young Mr. Five, or Christian as he’s known to his family and friends, is also the co-creator of this engaging, challenging app, and by all accounts is a force to be reckoned with. I’ve sent him a gaming friend request to hopefully do battle on the FastWord virtual arena, so we await to see if I can add word games to my list of Beat-A-Child activities. Maybe I should come up with a new name…
The app itself is a curious mix of the tried and tested board game ‘Scrabble’ and a traditional word search puzzle. Young Christian and his father invented the app after several rounds of Scrabble ended with the victory tally more in son’s favour than father’s. (According to the latter, it’s because he really is that good, not just because Dad’s that bad). Looking for something more challenging, they came up with Fastword, transposing it to app form over a busy eighteen months that Ryan (Dad) chronicled in an online blog (www.my-5-year-old-beats-me-at-scrabble.com if you’re interested!).
But the most important thing here is the app. How does it play? Remarkably well actually. It’s fast, tense and easy to learn (unlike it’s predecessor, ye olde Scrabble). You play against an opponent, who may be random or may be a friend of yours. The app runs through the Game Center on your Apple device, so if you’ve got a long list of friends who you can also get hooked on FastWord, you’re never going to be short of opponents. The gameplay is split into two stages, intimidating named The Lead and The Chase. When you’re Leading, you have to score as many points as possible. Certain letters earn you double points, and the longer the word, the higher the score. When you’re in Chase mode, the goal is to use up the letters your opponent needs, so the best course of action is short, sharp words using obscure letters. Lax, for example. That’d be a rapid little high scorer right there.
You can have as many games on the go as you like, as the game doesn’t necessarily take place in real time; you and your opponents have a generous window in which to take your turns. All in all, FastWord is a neat little package of addictive fun. It’s quick and easy to get hooked on; at first you’ll be flailing around as your feeble half-finished words slide like dust through your fingers, but soon, you’ll develop hawk-eyes that can pick out top-scorers in milliseconds. Then you may, may be ready to take on Mr. Five, who sounds more and more like a Bond villain each time I type his name.
Scramble over to the iPhone store to battle fellow wordsmiths today for free!
