Game Reviews

Word Soup

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Word Soup
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| Word Soup

We've all seen them: peculiar little boxes sitting in the corner of a pub, giving off an alluring glow from their grimy touchscreens, begging you and your drunken pals to gamble away potential drinking money on largely throwaway games.

Inside these 'itboxes' you'll find a mix of some rather clever and original titles alongside licensed gambling tosh - including various Deal or No Deal titles, complete with Noel Edmonds's beardy face leering into your soul.

Now, the lexical pub game challenge that is Word Soup has made its way onto Android and iOS devices - albeit without the chance to win money.

Lexical broth

Playing out in the same way as the classic pub favourite, Word Soup requires you to string together a line of letters to create a word for points. You can link letters in any direction and chain them together in any order as long as their sides touch.

Different letters are worth different amounts, from one to ten - à la Scrabble - with letters appearing in different colours to help you identify them easily on the board.

There are three modes on offer to enjoy, too: Relaxed, Timed, and Brain. A Relaxed game is exactly that - it's untimed and places no challenges on you other than getting high scores and clearing the board for 500 extra points.

Brain sees you finding longer words for more points, while also getting new titles every time you place down a lengthy word.

Timed is far more like the original title, offering up a race against the clock while you tie together letters. There are also time-boosting letters that let you gain a few extra seconds in your search.

Not quite a Heinz variety

Despite how enjoyable it is to play on the go in short blasts, Word Soup has its problems.

The way you select letters is a little finicky for big fingers. And while sliding across letters to select them is intuitive, it's a little annoying to have to double-tap the final letter to confirm the word submission.

There's an option to switch confirmation off, but this has the unintended consequence of making you accidentally submit words you didn't want to. There's no happy medium, although the problem is considerably less evident on a tablet.

Despite these niggles, Word Soup is a solid enough word game that has served its time on the pub circuit and is available in the infinitely more palatable form of a (slightly overpriced) £1.50 app.

Word Soup

Word Soup is an enjoyable way to pass the time, but little more than that. At least now you don't have to gamble with your money to play
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Vaughn Highfield
Vaughn Highfield
Quite possibly the tallest man in games, Vaughn has been enamoured with video games from a young age. However, it wasn't until he spent some time writing for the student newspaper that he realised he had a knack for talking people's ears off about his favourite pastime. Since then, he's been forging a path to the career he loves... even if it doesn't love him back.