It takes a lot to get me excited about a word game these days. In a post-Wordle world, the bar is just higher than it used to be. That said, a game like Catagrams meets that bar when it comes to providing an interesting daily challenge. There's more to it than that, but I'm not sure that it meets my own standards, personally.

Scrabble with cats and yarn

The concept for Catagrams looks very familiar for anyone who's played Scrabble or Bananagrams. You have letter tiles spread out across a grid, and it's your job to make words out of them.

As opposed to being competitive, Catagrams is a solo experience, but there's a twist to its word-making challenges: Each tile given to you had a unique thread on it, and you can only make words with tiles with matching threads. This ends up making each puzzle interconnected like a crossword puzzle, but instead of clues to help you figure out the letters the threads give you hints for laying out the letters you have.

Costume cats

The cat aspect of Catagrams is mostly just theming. Outside of any given puzzle, you'll see a cozy living room setup with a cat napping in a chair. Tapping on various pieces of decor takes you to a certain cat-themed level backdrop where you can complete puzzles to fill out the scenes with more stuff.

Each of the puzzles in these levels are procedurally generated, and you as the player have control over things like how many words you want to solve for, what their max length should be, and if you want to use harder words or not. Making things more complicated and harder grants you greater progress toward completing scenes.

Purrfectly playable, but not personal

Catagrams is an ad-supported free-to-play game at a baseline, but you can pay to remove ads, as well as unlock an "unlimited play" more and a special winter bonus level. For my money, the ad removal purchase is a no-brainer at $1.99 but it's also hard to resist the full unlock "treat package" option, especially considering half of the proceeds from that purchase go toward cat rescue services.

My only gripe with the game (if you can even call it one), is the procedural nature of its puzzles. Perhaps I am just spoiled by things like Puzzmo, but I like taking on a challenge that feels hand-crafted. Catagrams gets close to feeling like that with its daily puzzle, which at least feels communal in some way, and even closer by providing information about whether your puzzle solution matches the intended answer or not, but outside of that the more traditional puzzle unlock progression feels a little too much like having to make your own fun.

The bottom line

It's very possible that the "make your own challenge" nature of Catagrams that I personally am not in love with is exactly what you are looking for. Even if it isn't, this puzzle game is smart, adorable, and can give you a satisfying daily challenge.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/catagrams-review/

from : Mid Atlantic Consulting, Inc.