Parents' Guide to Wordscapes

This word game app mixes in fun with learning elements to give players an amusing time that can educate gamers while it entertains them. In Wordscapes, players can scramble letters they're given to see if a different formation will spark some spelling ideas, and they can get a detailed description of targeted words, which helps elevate the game to more than a just-for-fun pastime. It's easy to play since you swipe to choose letters, and gamers repeatedly see positive statements after they've guessed all the words in a puzzle correctly, which provides encouragement to keep playing. They'll consistently get more challenging puzzles as they do -- puzzles progress from three to seven-letter words at higher difficulty levels, but these are phrases even little kids should be able to recognize. The real challenge when you're asked, at times, to come up with eight or so different words from just four letters, which sometimes seems impossible.

The only big drawback is Wordscapes' lack of clear instructions. It's fairly easy to figure out how to play, and there's a few quick pop up hints, but otherwise, there's no tutorial on how to play or what you're doing through the game. As a result, players won't know how they're earning coins (the app's currency for hints) or how levels are structured. Nor will they learn that you'll earn a couple of coins for some bonus words that occasionally pop up. There's also no randomly generated puzzles here; if you get stuck, you have to either spend your earned coins for hints or pay for additional help to get past the word you're having trouble with. That could make some gamers stop playing if they don't want to pay for hints, and also limits its replayability. But if you can overlook this problem and you want to give your brain a workout, Wordscapes is a fun little challenge.