My experience with word boardgames has ranged from Boggle, to Scattergories, to the classic and venerable Scrabble (which I only won once in my household, so I laminated and framed the scoresheet). So I wasn’t overly eager to play the iPhone versions of these. Moxie, however, quickly demonstrated how simplicity can be combined with strategic player choice to create a pressure-free, easy-to-learn-and-play, and authentically enjoyable word game.
The premise is similar to the Scrabble-like game, Upwords, where after a word is spelled, one can create new words by extending and overlaying an additional letter: TIN becomes TINE, becomes FINE, which becomes FIRE, and then FIRED. There are 52 letters, which are presented one at a time and in random order, in a single game. Each letter has a point value and as you might expect – the longer the word and more complicated the spelling (up to 5 letters), the higher the score.
Where strategy becomes evident is when aiming for the namesake, “Moxie Words.” The Moxie Words are either from the categories of Animal (free version), Vegetable, or Mineral – listed in the Help menu – and provide extreme bonus points (100 for 3-letter words, 200 for 4-letter words, & 300 for 5-letter words) as well as the eagerly anticipated male voice who recognizes your efforts by whispering Moxie!
To rack up the points by making Moxie Words and aiming for a daily Global High Score (my personal best is 9th place), there are times when one might break the word chain to spell a nonsense word, or Twaddle. The 30 point deduction for a Twaddle isn’t much, but easy-to-spell words don’t add much to the coffer either. It really is more important to think strategically to create the Moxie Words than to fear breaking an ongoing word chain and suffering the consequences.
Moxie quickly rose to my top word game app and remains a favorite. If you have a favorite word game, let us know.
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You can grab Moxie – Free, or the $0.99 version of Moxie in the App Store.
Moxie was bought at author’s expense for review on Just Another iPhone Blog. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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TAGS: iPhone word games, scrabble
