| Review Date February - 18 - 2018 (Revised Feb-2-2020) | Alphabear: Hardcover Edition RELEASE DATE: Aug 23, 2017 DEVELOPER: Spry Fox LLC PUBLISHER: Spry Fox LLC |
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Genre | Word Game, Puzzle, Casual |
Theme | Cute Bears |
Art Style | Clean vector art with lots of gradients and contrasting colors |
Value for Price | ($10 or less on sale) Medium to High |
Replay Value | Medium to Infinite |
Quality | High |
Completion Time | Unknown - Uncompleted |
Review Purpose/Scope | Information for those unfamiliar with the game. A first impression based on limited gameplay time. This review serves little to no purpose to long time fans of the game |
Reviewer Playtime | About 2-3 hours I think my Steam playtime reflects leaving the game on |
Overall Rating | ★★★★☆ - GOOD - |
I was fond of the art style of TripleTown even though I had some issues with the gameplay limitations - so I keep an eye out on Spry Fox games. They caught my attention again with Alphabear, and even had the game available for free the weekend of Feb 3 2018.
Alphabear plays like a Scrabble or Words With Friends game for mobile/touch devices, but without the limitation of having to connect adjacent letters. Instead the limitations of each "puzzle" is the small size of the "board", the bears that take up spots and grow in size when words are matched around them (but they provide more points the bigger they are at the end of the puzzle), and as letters on the board are unused, they loose point value and eventually turn into stone when they drop to 0. The stone block mechanic is certainly the most annoying mechanic for me to deal with - thought it was clear the game was designed to make you use those letters so you can have more time to make more words or make you consider if you want to use newer letters with higher point values. I guess "ONE INTENTIONALLY VERY ANNOYING MECHANIC" is design trope of the developer, but at least here, it is used to progress the game and not have you stuck on a puzzle for ever (but I feel the bears already do that anyways). It would be nice if there power ups or other level mechanics to mitigate this - but it is possible that may appear in later puzzles.
The art style and design of the bears are adorable, without being annoyingly cute, and the design of the game is clean and pleasant.
If I had one major criticism about the game it a bit less about the quality or design of the game, and more of the game itself. How willing are you to pick your brain for words our of a very limited set of letters? How often will you get stuck trying to come up with words WHILE also trying to prevent letters becoming unusable stone slab? I think it would had been very helpful if there was some sort of power up or assist system that would help improve your chances of success, such as a limited or one time ability to remove or "revive" stone letters or an ability to add a letter or change a block/tile into a needed letter. I can't count how many times I could have been saved by a single helpful letter.