Syllablade review - A word game with a little more bite

Syllablade is a simple mixture of a word game and an RPG. Imagine Puzzle Quest, but with spelling instead of matching and you're part of the way there.

It's not the most original game on the App Store, and there are a good few niggles with it that might put some players off.

But if you like your lexicographical adventures to have a little more bite, and you don't mind a bit of grind, you're going to find a decent enough experience here.

You're playing an adventurer who's wandering through a variety of levels getting in fights with nasty monsters. You need to hack them to pieces. You do that by spelling words.

There's a grid of letters at the bottom of the screen, and you create words by swiping a line through them. You can connect adjacent letters vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.

The letter tiles have points on them like in Scrabble. The more points you score for a word, the more damage you do to your opponent. But when you hit them, they'll hit you back.

You get bonuses for longer words, and for knocking out a foe's hit points with exactly the right amount of damage. These bonuses fill up a meter, and when it's charged you'll get a gem.

These gems can deal massive amounts of damage, heal you up, or show you where the best word on the board is.

The coins you earn through play can be spent on new pieces of equipment. These stack, and either increase your damage dealing capabilities or your hit points.

Unfortunately there are no cosmetic changes here though, so even if you've got a mighty sword and helmet combo, your character is still going to look the same.

Lexi-kill

While there are some nice ideas here, after a while things do get a little bit stale. There's no real change to how the game plays, and eventually you'll just be grinding monsters to get better gear so you can grind other monsters.

Still, there's a decent enough experience here that you're not going to be too upset about its lack of longevity. And word-lovers are going to lap up everything that the game offers up for a good couple of hours.