The Best Word Game Apps 2017 by Michael Gorman

Word games are a perfect fit for today’s crazy lifestyle. They sharpen your vocabulary, train your brain, and provide entertainment whenever you feel like exercising your mind. Because of these great benefits, there is no shortage of word games for both Android and iOS.

If you are new to word games, you will find something interesting in the list of word games below. All of them are free and you can play advanced levels without having to pay anything.

1. Word Cookies

The first game on our list challenges players to create a number of words from a set of letters. They are contained in a special pot below the screen and you have to swipe around them to create solutions. If a player exceeds the number of words in the task, the game rewards them with coins. These helpful items can rescue in difficult situations by providing hints.

Word Cookies are available for both Android and iOS. 

2. WordBrain

An awesome word game with a 4.4 rating on Google Play. WordBrain has pretty simple rules that frequent players will certainly recognize: a set of words is provided which should be used to compile a word. As simple as it sounds, higher levels in the game are difficult enough to keep you playing for hours. People working with words often find them awesome for training.

The player’s development system in WordBrain is also amazing. A user starts with an ant with the smallest brain weight and ends with a unicorn with the heaviest. Additionally, the players can choose to play in different languages (15 languages with 700 levels per language).

Get WordBrain on Google Play Store or App Store to begin becoming a brainiac!

3. Wordscapes

If you have a nature-themed wallpaper as a background on your computer, you will want to grab a few from this game. Every level is played on a stunning nature background to help the player relax. The rules are simple: crossword-style structures on the top of the screen need to be filled by words which you put together by swiping a box on the bottom. The bonus system rewards the player with hints that help to complete more complex levels.

Wordscapes has in-game ads but they are unobtrusive and displayed only between levels. So, if you are ready to challenge yourself in this game, get it for your Android or iOS device now.  

4. SpellTower

This app was named the best by 148Apps' 2011 Best App Ever Awards, and for a good reason. The main idea is to create words from a jumble of letter tiles to clear the entire screen before a complete refill. This task is pretty addictive and SpellTower has confidently survived the test of time to become a true classic of the word game genre.

Five modes for are available for single player including puzzle mode, extreme puzzle mode, rush mode, debate mode, and tower mode. If you feel like playing against your friends, switch to the multiplayer battle mode and let the game begin!

SpellTower is available for download for both Android and iOS as well. 

5. Wordfeud

The first truly multiplayer word game on our list deserves special attention. Wordfeud is played by more than 30 million people all around the world which makes it one of the most popular in this genre. The purpose of the game is to create and place words on the 15 x 15 tile board and earn as many points as possible.

To try your skills against an opponent, a player can challenge them in a mini-competition. You can also play against your friends and even chat with them! Wordfeud has a high rating (4.4 on Google Play Store and 4.8 on App Store), so it will definitely become one of your favorite word game.

Install it for Android or iOS to begin playing.

6. Word Search

The last item on this list is another true classic of word game genre that many people love. The title of the game pretty much reveals the task: the players need to find words hidden in the board. Hundreds of puzzles will keep you playing for a lot of time and enjoy this great game. If you’re stuck playing a difficult level, the app gives you hints to make sure you advance to the next level.

Also, you will love Word Search for a lack of in-app purchases and little obtrusive ads between levels. If you have an Android device, you can get it on Google Play Store for free. iOS users are welcome to download it from the App Store.

Any Favorites?

Are you interested in trying some of these games? Well, have fun playing and training your brain! All of them are free and available for both Android and iOS, so you can download them today!

Michael Gorman is high skilled editor and proofreader who currently works at Awriter. He is proficient in blog writing and online freelance networking. Feel free to contact him via Facebook .

If you have any word game apps to recommend, tell us about them in the comments below.

The Language of Pokémon

Pokémon has been dominating the news recently. Older readers probably remember the phenomenon surrounding the franchise in the late '90s with the TV show, trading card game, and first generation of video games that got tonnes of people obsessed with catching them all. Now, after years of steady global popularity, it looks like the franchise has struck gold with the "Pokémon GO" app.

Now I'd like to look at some of the interesting linguistic features of Pokémon. Firstly, the name:

Pokémon, portmanteau

For those not familiar with the franchise, it's Japanese. However, the name isn't really Japanese, it's a portmanteau of English words that Japanese borrowed. In Japanese, the franchise is called "Poketto Monsutā" from the English "Pocket Monster". The Japanese was then shortened and merged to make "Pokémon".

Taking Pokémon around the world

Aside from the stories, the battling, and trading, the fact that Pokémon went global gave rise to some very interesting translations. Today I'd like to look at some of the best Pokémon from the first generation (also featured in Pokémon GO), and some of the most interesting translations used.

Scyther

Scyther is a bug/flying type Pokémon, and looks like a praying mantis with scythe-like blades for arms. In Japanese it was called strike, but the French name is awesome! It combines the French for insect (insecte) and the gardening tool pruning shears (sécateur), to make "Insecateur".

Alakazam

Alakazam has an amazing name, since it's the third of three evolutions, the first and second being "Abra" and "Kadabra"... get it? Abra, Kadabra, Alakazam.

Gyarados

Almost everywhere in the world, this Pokémon is a portmanteau of two monsters from Japanese monster movies, Gyaos and Rodan. However, for the French translation, they decided to go with Léviator, from Leviathan. Pretty cool, right?

Arcanine

The fire-type dog is a portmanteau of arcane and canine in English. However, in Japanese it is actually called Windie, due to its speed. Clearly that wouldn't have sounded right and needed to be changed.

Gengar

The name of this ghost-type Pokémon in Japanese was taken from the German word doppelgänger. In most countries, it goes by Gengar. However, the French translation went above and beyond when they combined the words for ectoplasm and plasma to call it Ectoplasma.

Dragonite

The dragon-type Pokémon has a cool name in both French and German. In French, it combines the Latin word for "dragon" and the French for "colossal", giving the name Dracolosse. I reckon German wins this localisation battle with Dragoran, from the words for "dragon" and the verb "to riot", randalieren.

Blastoise

In English, this water-type Pokémon's name is a portmanteau of "blast" and "tortoise". Everywhere but France kept it the same, with France opting for a portmanteau of the French for "turtle" and "tank", to give Tortank.

Charizard

The most popular of the original 150 Pokémon. This dragon-like fire/flying-type Pokémon is not only awesome in appearance, but its name in most localised languages is awesome. Of course, English is a combination of "char" and "lizard". In French it's Dracofeu, from "dragon" in Latin and "fire" in French. German wins this round with a combination of "ember", "dragon", and "rocket", giving us Glurak. Regardless, you probably want this Pokémon in your team.

Now get out there and catch them all!

Localization and the Video Games Industry: Who Gets What?

Last weekend, Saturday to be precise, I was lucky enough to take a trip to London for this year's Eurogamer Expo, which now refers to itself as the cooler-sounding "EGX". As a self-confessed video game and language nerd, I am very interested in the translation and localization of video games and electronic entertainment.

When I was younger, I often didn't give a second thought to the fact that the video games I played were always either in English or provided an option to select English from a number of languages. As a kid I would often head into town to get a new game and immediately spend the entire trip home reading the blurb on the back and the instruction manual.

Growing up in the UK meant that the text on the box and in the instructions was either only in English or was in EFIGS (English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish), which are often deemed the "most important" languages in Europe. While some of the packaging featured other languages, the software often was only in English, with no other language options provided.

The discrepancy between the packaging and the software barely bothered me as a kid. However, as an adult I now realise that large corporations will only translate and localize games when there is a profitable market to be exploited. With all this in mind, I decided to quickly do some research into which languages and locales the video games industry favours.

Steam

Steam's search engine allows for the filtering of the online distribution service's catalogue by language. This past weekend there were 14,576 titles available on Steam, with around 90% of these available in English. Titles in the other EFIGS languages are widely available. 44% of titles are available in German and almost 42% are available in the French language. 37% and 35% of games are listed as being in Spanish and Italian respectively. 

These figures are hardly surprising if you just take a look at the usage notes for "EFIGS" on Wiktionary: "In software development, used to designate five widely used languages that software (notably video games) is often translated to."

It's very clear that games are not translated in the same proportions as there are speakers of a language. If this was the case, Simplified and Traditional Chinese combined would not account for only 4% of the games available through Steam. In fact, it's fairly obvious (and a little sad) that the proportions clearly line up with the relative size of the markets and their spoken languages.

Languages of Videogames on Steam | Create Infographics

Xbox Marketplace

It's not just the language you speak that may limit the number of games you can get. While I am lucky to speak English, I am also in the United Kingdom. However, that did little to console me when I found out that if you take a look through the Xbox 360 games available on the Xbox Marketplace, you are privy to a vastly different number of games depending on your locale.

The United States enjoyed the largest number of games available. At the time I checked, the UK's catalogue contained 76 fewer titles than the United States. That said, there were 1223 titles available in the US and the UK's catalogue contained 1147 games, making the difference minute.

While Steam showed a linguistic bias towards European languages, the Xbox Marketplace tends to favour markets in North America and Europe, where users have access to more titles than elsewhere in the world. For example, 1112 games were available in Spain while only 365 were available in Argentina, despite both countries being primarily Spanish-speaking. For some odd reason, Argentina also has half as many games available as other Spanish-speaking countries in South America, such as Chile (840), Colombia (861).

Much like on Steam, mainland China gets the short end of the stick, where a paltry 25 titles were available. However, 976 were available in Hong Kong. Undoubtedly this can partially be attributed to non-linguistic factors. In fact, the Hong Kong marketplace had more titles available than any other Asian locale.

Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia all have access to between 300 and 400 games while in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), over 500 titles were available. Does this increase have anything to do with the fact that the UAE is home to the highest net migration rate in the world?

Xbox Marketplace | Create Infographics

Is the difference between the number of games available in Europe and South America solely due to the size of their video game markets or are there political and economic reasons as well? Is the discrepancy just because some languages are easier to work with than others? If you happen to be an industry expert or deal with localization, I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

How Key Is Localisation For The Next-Gen Consoles?

The internet, social media, and seemingly the world appear to be ablaze with talk of the newest consoles. The Wii U has been on the market since last Christmas, and though February brought the PS4 announcement, fans weren't shown any noteworthy glimpses of the console until Sony's presentation at the start of E3 in Los Angeles this week.

Microsoft had already shown off the hardware for the new Xbox One, which is scheduled for release in November. The issue of digital rights management (DRM) and second-hand games had already been the main talking point between the PS4 and Xbox One, with Sony poking fun at their rivals with a "how-to" video on trading games.

Ignoring a typical fanboy argument, we'd like to look at how important localisation and translation will be as these two consoles square up against each other towards the end of the year. Be warned, if you have a fear of statistics the next few paragraphs have a lot of them!

We've seen this battle before...

Sony's current offering, the PS3, has sold over 13.5 million units in the US, 3 million in the UK and around 1.5 million in Canada. Japan accounts for over 6 million units, which, given that Sony is a Japanese company and has a good fanbase in Japan, is hardly surprising.

In total, the PS3 has sold around 77 million units as of January 2013, and at least 40 million of these surely must have gone to locations that are not English-speaking. This would make a majority of the unit sales neither English nor, more importantly, Japanese.

As for the Xbox 360, 25.4 million units were shifted in the US, beating the PS3, same goes for the UK with 8 million units, and 1 million were sold in Australia and New Zealand. The American company Microsoft certainly has it better when it comes to English-speaking territories.

With only around 1.5 million units sold in Japan and only 13.7 million sold across the whole of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, could it be said that Microsoft is relying too much on English-speaking markets? With 77.2 million units sold in total according to latest accounts, which is slightly better than the PS3, Xbox is in the lead. However, it should be noted that the Xbox 360 was released almost a year before the PS3.

With such a high number of units supposedly requiring localised content, it would be silly to assume that consoles can sell themselves solely on the hardware, the games and software are crucial to their success.

This is particularly relevant in Sony's case.

It's fair to say that the success hinges on more than just translation. Few gamers would be happy with subtitles when a story could be dubbed. This is perhaps the only time when we advocate the use of dubbing over good ol' subtitling.

We're by no means saying that either of these companies has forgotten about the importance of localisation. Rather, we're suggesting that given the weight of international markets, whoever gets their international marketing strategies and software localisation correct will probably be crowning themselves the King of Consoles by this time next year.

The Best Word Game Apps

Yesterday we told you about some of the best language games. Today we've got a list of some of the best language games for your smartphone, tablet or whatever. Get on the App store, marketplace or equivalent and check some of these out.

Words With Friends/Word Jax (Windows Phone)

If you are familiar with Scrabble, then you know how to play Words With Friends. The multi-platform app is available on Facebook (for when you should be working), iPhone and Android. We recommend it for anyone who likes Scrabble but has friends that don't have the same phone...

Word Scramble/Wordament (Windows Phone)

The classic game of Boggle digitally available for Windows Phone and other platforms. Slide your finger around to make words from a grid. No problem.

It's like this, only portable and
easy to discreetly play at work!

Hangman Free

The original classroom game now available for smartphones. You know the rules and how to play. Plus, you can avoid a disagreement on whether or not drawing the base of the gallows counts as a life lost or not.

WordJong

Mahjong plus Scrabble? More or less. Remove the tiles in order to spell words. Really simple but incredibly addictive. Phone ran out of battery from playing too much? There are also versions available for the PC, Nintendo DS and Wii so you'll probably never be too far from this twist on the Chinese classic.

If you don't understand this we don't recommend WordJong.

Crostix

This game combines two challenges in one - you're solving clues and guessing a quote at the same time. This acrostic puzzle has two parts: on one side you get regular crossword clues you must solve, but each blank is numbered. The numbers correspond to a letter in the quote on the other side. It's definitely a challenge, but if you get stuck with the clues you can always try to work out words in the quote, or vice versa.

If you know of any other great word or language games, we'd love to try them out! Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments below.

Language Games You Wanted For Christmas

Even though you're probably hungover, bloated or both, there are a few things you probably wish you had done differently over the holidays. We have a few of the games you wish you had played rather than eating that extra piece of turkey...

Articulate

When it doesn't descend into an argument, this is a great game. Players move around the board based on the number of words their partner can guess in a given time period. They must describe the words without saying a part of the word or spelling the word. A great way to test your linguistic capabilities.

Scrabble

The original language board game. Scrabble tests your abilities with letters and lexicon. Now with the addition of 2-letter words, people can get annoyed by your use of za and qi.

Bananagrams

A bit like Scrabble, but not exactly the same. In Bananagrams you have to make words using all the tiles you have in a form similar to a crossword. Every time a player has used all their tiles everyone takes an extra tile. The player who finishes when there are no spare tiles left is declared the winner. Humorous banana puns included.

Hangman

You should know this game. You know how many letters are in the word. You guess a letter. Every time you get it wrong you lose a "life" and error by error you build the gallows to hang yourself. Of course there are plastic versions of this game but it can be played with a paper and pen.

Boggle

Dice with letters? Boggle is another game involving anagrams. Shake up the dice and see how many words you can find in a given time period. The longer the better.

Pass The Bomb

How are you with suffixes, prefixes or just words in general? In Pass the Bomb you are given a combination of letters that must be in either the beginning, the end or in any part of a word. Start the bomb and you can only pass it on once you've thought of a word. If the bomb blows up in your hands... unlucky.

Crosswords

Maybe your patience was stretched thin by your family. If so, crosswords are the ultimate solo sport. Sit down, relax, grab a pen and train your brain with general knowledge combined with word placement.

Scattergories

You're given a list of 12 categories and a starting letter. A timer is started for 3 minutes, and you have to come up with a word that starts with the chosen letter that fits in each category. You don't get any points if someone has the same word as you, so you better come up with creative answers that nobody else has thought of if you want to win!

Word-search

Probably easier than the other options but a classic for school-kids. A grid of letters with words hidden somewhere in them. Simple.

Word Ladder/Word Golf

Start with one word. Answer a question. The answer to the next question will be almost identical to the previous, except one letter has changed. CART becomes DART becomes MART becomes MARK. Get it? Good.

Now get back to recovering from the Yuletide excess.