Letterpress

If you’re a digital logophile, you’re probably in the middle of at least one game of Words with Friends right now. It’s free, all your friends are there, and you know the game. But you’ve got an iPhone, too, and that App Store’s a big place. There are so many iterations of the same word games that it’s hardly worth trying out new ones anymore.

Then there’s Letterpress. You might have heard of it, as it was Runner-Up for the App Store’s Game of the Year for 2012. And with more than enough to back that ranking: it’s sleek, it’s free, and there isn’t an ad in sight. Plus, you’ve never played it before.

It starts as a 5x5 grid of white letter tiles, randomized each game, for two players. When it’s your turn, you pick the letters you need to make your word, and you tap “Submit”. But every time you do, the tiles you use turn from white to whatever color you are. Let’s say you’re blue. If you use a tile (turning it blue) and also use nearby tiles (turning them blue as well), the surrounded tile turns a darker shade. In other words, it’s secured. Now your opponent--let’s say red--can’t change the color of that tile unless he or she uses at least one of the (blue) surrounding tiles and turns it red. Players take turns making words and battling between tiles to secure their color. When all twenty-five of the white tiles have been played (and thereby turned either red or blue) the game ends and the player with the most tiles of their color wins.

You can guess, without much trouble, that a game of Letterpress can be quite a bit shorter than a game of Words with Friends. But the tiles don’t run through as quickly as you’d think. When there are multiple X’s to secure and a deep framework of conquest-style strategy, it becomes much less a game of discovering obscure words and crossing fingers for a hand that isn’t seven vowels, and more a game of holding onto the letters you secure and working as efficiently as you can to sweep the grid with your color.

Gameplay aside, Letterpress is unbelievable clean, slick, and easy to play. It really is beautiful. Even if you somehow lose interest in the game (you won’t), you’ll never stop wanting to watch the crisp, ad-free letters glide across the screen or hear the soft clicks of the tiles as you form your next word.

And even though it costs absolutely nothing to download the game and play it in full, there’s an in-app upgrade for a buck that gives you access to a number of equally minimalist themes (colors besides red and blue) and the ability to play more than two games at a time. Letterpress is yet another brilliant game from a very generous and dedicated indie dev.