iPhone preview: WordFu

ngmoco is already making a reputation for itself as one of the more inventive publishers on iPhone, thanks to Rolando, Topple, Dr. Awesome and other titles.

Now we've had a squizz at the company's upcoming word-puzzler WordFu, courtesy of Apple's Eric Jue, who sat down this morning with Pocket Gamer to show off a bunch of new iPhone games.

"It's due to be released in the next week or two, if not sooner," he said. "Stylistically, it follows a martial arts movie, so it has the sound effects and look and feel of a kung fu movie."

However, the actual gameplay is a pretty clear splice between iPhone dice game MotionX Poker and traditional word games like Boggle.

So, you're given a bunch of dice with letters on, and you have a limited amount of time to shake your iPhone to roll them around (you can flick individual dice across the screen by dragging them too).

The game itself then involves making words from those letters by tapping on them in turn, then shaking your iPhone to register each word. Oh, and it'll offer local multiplayer action via wi-fi.

"You can challenge somebody to a head-to-head WordFu," says Jue. "We've killed hours in the office with it! You have the same tiles, and you end up panicking because you're trying to come up with words, and you can see the other player shaking their iPhone. It's really fun."

It looks it. ngmoco has published a short teaser video on its own blog (embedded below), while TouchArcade grabbed some footage at a recent developer's event, which you can watch here.