Recommendation: A fun word game that combines elements of Boggle, Scrabble, and CRPGs.

Critique: Letter Quest plays like Boggle: you are presented a bunch of random letters, and you have to use them to form English words. Unlike Boggle (or most word games based on it, like Bookworm), you do not have to form words using adjacent letters. You can type the letters on your keyboard or click them with the mouse pointer; using the keyboard makes the game play much faster. There is no time limit, however: you can take your time to find better words. The frame for this word play is that you are a junior Grim Reaper who is fighting their way through a winding dungeon of monsters, and you form words to deal damage to your foes.

The element that is taken from Scrabble is the letter value: letters can be worth 1 (common), 2 (uncommon), or 3 (rare) points, which count toward the damage that you deal to a monster when you submit a word.

The CRPG elements are that your character and your foes have hit points (HP), each battle you win earns you experience points (XP) and crystals, and you use the crystals and XP to improve your character's abilities.

Battles: In a battle, when you submit a word, it does damage to your opponent, which is subtracted from its HP. If it still has a positive number of HP, it takes an action (which is usually an attack that does your character damage). If you ever take enough damage for your HP to be reduced to zero, you lose that level. Once you've completed a level, it is marked on the map, and you can select that level again in the future so you don't have to start from the very beginning every time you play. Some of the levels include fights with "boss monsters:" especially tough foes that have special defenses and/or special attacks. Special defenses usually involve reducing the amount of damage from all words in a particular category. For instance, they could take no damage from 3-letter words, or take reduced damage from any words that don't contain a double letter ('EE' or 'SS' or 'TT,' for example). Special attacks are things that alter your selection of letters, including: turning a bunch of the letters into the same letter (such as "Z"), poison tiles (some of the letters turn green and will do damage to you as well as your foe), plague tiles (some of the letters turn red, do no damage, and will "infect" adjacent tiles if they're not used), petrified tiles (some of the letters turn to stone and can't be played), spin tiles (some of the letters are inverted, making them slightly harder to read), and tornado tiles (some of the letters are marked with a twister and will randomly change each turn if they aren't played).

Awards: When you complete a level - usually a chain of several monsters - your character is awarded crystals and XP. The crystals are currency that you use to buy weapons, potions, and books. There are no purchases you can make that cost real money; everything uses the crystals that you earn by completing levels in the game.

Weapons: You can equip one weapon at a time, and each weapon has an effect on gameplay: some do more damage, some provide healing, some increase the XP earned, some increase the crystals you earn. Some of the weapons are unlocked by paying a fee of crystals, others are unlocked by achieving in-game goals.

Potions: Potions are items that you can use once that give a temporary benefit: healing your character, reducing the damage of enemy attacks, increasing the damage of your attacks, etc. You have a limit on how many potions you can carry, which can be increased by spending crystals.

Books: Books are key items that you purchase using crystals; each one provides a permanent boost to your character, and the XP that you earn by completing levels is automatically applied to improving/"leveling up" the book(s) you have equipped. There are more books than you can equip at one time, so part of the fun is choosing which book(s) to equip to help you with your particular play-style. Are you going to focus on playing longer words? There's a book for that. Are you going to focus on forming words with high-value letters? There's a book for that, too.

Letter Quest is a great game, and a must-have for any fan of word games.

[u]Recommendation[/u]: A fun word game that combines elements of Boggle, Scrabble, and CRPGs. [u]Critique[/u]: Letter Quest plays like Boggle: you are presented a bunch of random letters, and you have to use them to form English words. Unlike Boggle (or most word games based on it, like Bookworm), you do not have to form words using adjacent letters. You can type the letters on your keyboard or click them with the mouse pointer; using the keyboard makes the game play much faster. There is no time limit, however: you can take your time to find better words. The frame for this word play is that you are a junior Grim Reaper who is fighting their way through a winding dungeon of monsters, and you form words to deal damage to your foes. The element that is taken from Scrabble is the letter value: letters can be worth 1 (common), 2 (uncommon), or 3 (rare) points, which count toward the damage that you deal to a monster when you submit a word. The CRPG elements are that your character and your foes have hit points (HP), each battle you win earns you experience points (XP) and crystals, and you use the crystals and XP to improve your character's abilities. [b]Battles[/b]: In a battle, when you submit a word, it does damage to your opponent, which is subtracted from its HP. If it still has a positive number of HP, it takes an action (which is usually an attack that does your character damage). If you ever take enough damage for your HP to be reduced to zero, you lose that level. Once you've completed a level, it is marked on the map, and you can select that level again in the future so you don't have to start from the very beginning every time you play. Some of the levels include fights with "boss monsters:" especially tough foes that have special defenses and/or special attacks. Special defenses usually involve reducing the amount of damage from all words in a particular category. For instance, they could take no damage from 3-letter words, or take reduced damage from any words that don't contain a double letter ('EE' or 'SS' or 'TT,' for example). Special attacks are things that alter your selection of letters, including: turning a bunch of the letters into the same letter (such as "Z"), poison tiles (some of the letters turn green and will do damage to you as well as your foe), plague tiles (some of the letters turn red, do no damage, and will "infect" adjacent tiles if they're not used), petrified tiles (some of the letters turn to stone and can't be played), spin tiles (some of the letters are inverted, making them [i]slightly[/i] harder to read), and tornado tiles (some of the letters are marked with a twister and will randomly change each turn if they aren't played). [b]Awards[/b]: When you complete a level - usually a chain of several monsters - your character is awarded crystals and XP. The crystals are currency that you use to buy weapons, potions, and books. There are no purchases you can make that cost real money; everything uses the crystals that you earn by completing levels in the game. [b]Weapons[/b]: You can equip one weapon at a time, and each weapon has an effect on gameplay: some do more damage, some provide healing, some increase the XP earned, some increase the crystals you earn. Some of the weapons are unlocked by paying a fee of crystals, others are unlocked by achieving in-game goals. [b]Potions[/b]: Potions are items that you can use once that give a temporary benefit: healing your character, reducing the damage of enemy attacks, increasing the damage of your attacks, etc. You have a limit on how many potions you can carry, which can be increased by spending crystals. [b]Books[/b]: Books are key items that you purchase using crystals; each one provides a permanent boost to your character, and the XP that you earn by completing levels is automatically applied to improving/"leveling up" the book(s) you have equipped. There are more books than you can equip at one time, so part of the fun is choosing which book(s) to equip to help you with your particular play-style. Are you going to focus on playing longer words? There's a book for that. Are you going to focus on forming words with high-value letters? There's a book for that, too. Letter Quest is a [u]great[/u] game, and a must-have for any fan of word games.