Bookworm Adventures Deluxe - Vocabulary Fight

PopCap's name speaks for itself: Bejeweled, Zuma, Chuzzle, Bookworm and other company's puzzles are all-time best-sellers in the world of the casual gaming. A release of new PopCap's title was long expected and at last ... here it is, Bookworm Adventures Deluxe - a smashing puzzle-fight-quest mixture with 3 storeybooks, challenging mini-games and more than 150 enemies.

Game story: A funny green worm named Lex whom we've already met in Bookworm is to face a dangerous threat to the Great Library. You'll follow him to the Ancient Greece, Island of Cyclopes and other mythic places described in 30 chapters of his adventures. Traversing a huge map, Lex is to fight Troyan Spearman, wolves, sirens and many other enemies on his way.

So the main task of the game is to defeat enemies by spelling words composed of tiles with different letters.

Those who played the first game will notice at once that the playing field and rules have  changed a bit: Bookworm Adventures Deluxe game has a 4x4 grid filled with randomly placed  letters. Unlike original game, where you make a word of adjacent letters, here you pick up letters from anywhere. Try to make long words to get more points and power for fighting foes. If you are completely at loss for a word, use the Scramble button, but you'll be punished with penalty for reshuffling the letters.

Along with creating words from the grid, Lex faces enemies at the top of the playing field.

Once the word is created, Lex starts exchanging blows with an enemy in a duel. Here you'll see how your lexical skills are rewarded: if you've made a short word, you may only take away one heart above the enemy's head. If your word was long enough, you'll take away 2 or 3 monster's hearts. When the enemy's Health meter is empty, i.e. when all 5 hearts over his head are taken away, the monster is totally defeated.

Mind that some Secret Bonus Words do additional damage to monsters - try spelling foes' names or the names of their attacks, and your chances to kill the evil creature with one blow will rise!

Another feature of the game is a Level up Bar - it's gradually filling up as you defeat enemies. As it's filled and your Lex is strong enough, he can oppose the increasingly tougher foes and in the end even fight a "boss character" who's the strongest enemy at the end of each chapter.

Beware of foes' bad hits: when injured, you miss a turn or your enemy can crack some tiles  - you can still use it to make a word but its points are not scored.

Progressing through chapters, you'll be rewarded with  power-ups: gems and magic potions which will help you to win a battle. Multiple treasures like "The Bow of Zyx" which boosts words with X, Y or Z letters, or Golden Fleece treasure which gives worm an extra heart are also waiting for Lex on his quest.

Profit of a chance to bring winter to your game: you can choose different types of animation by typing special codes into the main menu.

Thus, the word "winter" is a key word for snow falling, while "celebrate" code's animation is a perfect background for the game to be played on Xmas and New Year Eve. So we think Bookworm Adventures Deluxe will be a good Xmas gift for all gamers! 

Pros and cons: The effects in the game are astonishing, the plot is able to held spellbound both children and grown-ups. It's really educative, besides, it trains memory: here you are not to simply make words, but to memorize the names of the creatures you meet, as making their names score you more points.

 But in my humble opinion, people fond of brainteasing word games are rarely fond of fighting, so isn't the game too overstuffed?

System requirements: OS: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows Vista Memory: 128 MB DirectX: 7.0 or later CPU: P2 500