Parents' Guide to Scrabble GO

Sometimes there are games that are good enough on their own, but seem to get carried away with extras. Scrabble GO is one of those games. The classic Scrabble game is fun, and the additional Word Drop and Tumbler games are pretty good too. The games are easy to dive into and play, because they challenge players' skills without ever feeling frustrating. And even the power-ups, which seem to be a little too much of a crutch in some matches, don't feel overly outrageous. In fact, if Scopely had left things at that, Scrabble GO would be a great, fun game for friends and family. Unfortunately, that's not the case.



Most of the game's problems stem from its ridiculously aggressive push for social gaming. While it's fun to connect and have a casual game, especially with those you know, Scrabble GO is constantly trying to push players to start multiple matches against multiple complete strangers. All of these invasive pop-ups are patchworked together throughout the game's menus as well. Trying to navigate through the social media clutter to do anything is a complete mess. Making matters even worse, these pop-ups listing out available challengers even interrupt ongoing matches in between turns. It doesn't help that some of these random strangers aren't exactly "kid friendly" in their behavior. There's a fair amount of nastiness showing up from time to time in the game's chat, whether it's sore losers (or even sore winners) spewing venom or other forms of inappropriate conversation. The result ends up being that the more you play Scrabble GO with others, the less you actually want to play Scrabble GO with others.