WordsUp! Academy (Wii U) Review

The basic premise here is fairly simple. Each level gives out a handful of different letters, and the challenge is to spell as many words as quickly as possible using only these letters. Story mode pits the player against an opponent, and words need to be found and spelled out quicker than he or she can put them together. It is a very simple sort of puzzle, and basically the only trick the game has, but it works fairly well in small doses. It is a fast past, quick thinking sort of puzzle, requiring the player to scan through the letters and try to figure out what words can be thrown together from them. It is a fun little way to kill ten minutes here and there, particularly for people that are fans of word based puzzles.

There are a handful of different modes here, but really it is the same basic thing regardless of which mode is selected. There is the standard story mode, but also a versus mode, free play mode, relaxed mode, blitz mode, and classic mode. That sounds like a lot of different options, but it really doesn't change much between all of the different modes. There are some minor differences, and for example blitz mode will shuffle up the letters every once in a while, but it is all the same thing. Even in one mode, all the puzzles in it are really only minor changes on the very first one in the game with only different letters used to tell them apart. This isn't like a crossword puzzle either, where sure they are all variants on the same idea but the clues are different enough between puzzles to make enthusiasts want to go down and track down new ones. Changing the letters does make the words that can be spelled different, but the basic puzzle here is exactly the same regardless of the specifics. It causes the game to stagnate long before it is over, and while it is enjoyable enough to run through a puzzle or two, this isn't the kind of game people are going to be able to spend an entire afternoon on.

Another issue here is that some of these words are far too esoteric for most people to be able to figure out what they are. In any batch of letters there will be some very common words, but then there are others that even the people writing the dictionary are going to think got in there by mistake. Even people with good vocabularies are going to get stuck at parts, and it isn't particularly fun cycling through letter combinations trying to figure out which one was apparently a word so obscure that if it was put in Microsoft Word it would immediately get a red squiggly line underneath it. This is going to be particularly frustrating for younger players, who based on the simple aesthetic are probably supposed to be the target audience for the game. Obviously, the game isn't going to limit the combinations to "common words most people know" so a little frustration here is to be expected. It still doesn't make things any more fun, though, and it makes things more of a slog to get through then they already were.

Additionally, the game allows vocabulary to be tested in six different languages, including English, French, and Spanish. This is good for multilingual players, but the game seems to have some delusions it can be used as a learning tool, which is decidedly less good. One of the advertised features of the game is that it serves as a perfect complement to a language course, which is a pretty bold claim the game never has any interest in backing up. It would be like if the new Madden title was advertised as the perfect complement to physical exercise, and just because something is kind of tangentially related to a subject doesn't mean it complements it. There is absolutely no world where this is going to help people build their vocabulary in any language, as the game doesn't really offer context to the words it wants spelled. There isn't enough here to be a proper learning tool, and at times I wonder if there is enough here to even be a proper game.