Scramble With Friends – Zynga’s addictive mashup of Boggle with friends online
by Paul Wilks
Mar 23, 2012 12:20 PM –
Install
Scramble With Friends is the new title from Zynga. After heady success with the likes of Words With Friends and Hanging With Friends, the online gaming giants have practically copied the game of Boggle into their familiar social-gaming format. It’s easy to play, challenging and already massively popular, it’s essential for social puzzlers and fans of the series.
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC Desire HD
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Great graphics!
- Easy to play!
- Challenging gameplay!
- Includes a homescreen Widget!
- Lots of people to play against, login via Facebook an challenge your friends!
Cons
- Intrusive advertising.
- Pointless token system.
Features:
Scramble With Friends will be huge, in fact it already is. It’s essentially Boggle, but layered with Zyngas trademark social platform and the ability to play against players from around the world in a stable and luxurious environment. The game lets you log in via Facebook or Twitter if you wish, and you can play against your social networking friends. Alternatively you can create your own game and play against the probably hundreds of thousands of gamers on various platforms.
The thing that annoys me about Zynga games is the intrusive advertising models they use. Here you have Admob banners along the bottom, in addition to a compulsory full page advert after each turn. It’s very annoying and spammy but it’s something Zynga continues to do regardless. For Scramble With Friends they’ve also added a completely pointless token system which limits the amount you can play at any one time. Because, you can only have so much fun huh? Your tokens are renewed over time and you get one token after about 15 minutes or so. I can’t understand this, why would Zynga want to limit the amount of games you can play? You can buy more tokens (of course) but you’d think with all the advertising this might be a little more generous. I just get the impression with Zynga it’s all about the money, not so much about the gaming experience.
Gameplay, if you are familiar with Boggle, is pretty straightforward. Simply create words by stringing adjacent letters together. The more letters the more points, the trickier the letters you use the more points you win. After the first round (there are three rounds in total per match) the game introduces double/triple word/letter tiles (much like in Scrabble Words With Friends). Your totals are compared with your opposing player to decide the winner after all the rounds are complete.
Regardless of how the game floods you with adverts, demands money for more tokens and despite the way Zynga is essentially copying other games for themselves, there’s absolutely no doubt that Scramble With Friends is massively playable and loads of fun. The graphics and sound effects are very polished and it feels great to play. It’s free and, if you can put up with the ads, it’s definitely worth a look- and certainly if you’ve been a fan of Words With Friends and Hanging With Friends.
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Scramble with Friends – In-game view
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Scramble with Friends – In-game view 2
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Scramble with Friends – Widget
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Scramble with Friends – Login
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Scramble with Friends – Pre-game power up screen
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Scramble with Friends – Game paused
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Scramble with Friends – Tutorial
Fun Factor:
Despite my reservations, there’s little dismissing the fact that, if you’re a fan of word games, Scramble With Friends is loads of fun and thoroughly enjoyable. Ads aside, gameplay is frantic and challenging and the graphics and sound make for a great social gaming experience.
Addictive:
Scramble With Friends is incredibly addictive and I found myself wishing the people I am playing against would hurry up and take their turn! Obviously your gameplay will be stunted by the number of tokens you have and, unless you’re willing to fork out for more, you’ll just have to wait.
Graphics:
The graphics are fluid and slick- just as you should expect from Zynga. Brightly coloured and detailed, the game looks and feels great to play.
Accelerometer, Vibration & Sound:
There are a variety of sound effects, during the menu screens for example. Here, when you click to log into Facebook you get the Facebook notification ‘plop’ and when you invite followers from Twitter you get a tweet noise. You’ll also get a sound when it’s your turn and the game posts a notification in your status bar. You can switch these off if you wish but if you get into the game, it’s good to know when it’s your turn again.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
Android Game,
Android Tablet Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Boggle,
Hanging with Friends,
Hangman,
Scrabble,
Scramble With Friends,
Word Games,
Words With Friends,
Zynga
Categorised in: Brain & Puzzle
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