Scriver: A Word Game turns spelling into an art gallery hustle
A word puzzler where your biggest problem might be a pirate with opinions on vowels
- Scriver: A Word Game mixes wordplay with gallery management
- Over 25 characters disrupt runs with rules like stolen art or disabled letters
- 120 hand-painted artworks shape builds and synergies
Ever seen a word game with an art gallery attached to it? Scriver: A Word Game has one, and the combination makes more sense than it has any right to.
You're buying, selling, and arranging artworks in your gallery, then heading into exhibits to spell words and impress a rotating cast of patrons and critics. Which sounds manageable enough until you actually meet them.
Bandit the Cat will nick one of your pieces for the round. Garrrth the Pirate hates consonants, which suddenly makes Q look a lot more appealing. Sir Righteous the Knight disables the rightmost letter you just played. There are over 25 characters in total, each capable of showing up as either a patron or a critic, and they can shift the whole shape of a run depending on who turns up.
The deck pulls from 120 or so hand-painted artworks, each with its own abilities and synergies. More hand-painted pieces than you'd expect for a mobile release, and the art itself is quite nice to look at once the UI gets out of the way.
Books enhance individual letters, albums change the deck at a broader level, and drinks level up word traits. Six starting decks and six challenge modes give you routes in before you even get to endless mode.
Word games are an easy sell for me. The roguelike structure, with runs that shift depending on which patrons show up and what art you can afford, looks like it earns its complexity. Fair warning on the interface, though. Once everything's on screen, it gets fairly crammed, and it takes a moment to work out where to look.
Scriver: A Word Game is out now on iOS. No news on an Android release yet.
For more like this, our picks for the best word games on iOS should keep you busy.
