We used to think that scrambled letters and crossword puzzles were to keep old ladies busy during soap opera commercial breaks. Leave it to social network gaming developer Zynga to show us that we couldn’t have been more wrong. Scramble With Friends is the latest game from Zynga, and draws on many of the conventions users have come to love from Words With Friends, its runaway hit of a mobile game.

In Scramble, the key is not placing letters on double letter and triple word tiles, though. In fact, all the letters are laid out already. The key is to drag your finger across the letters to form words that actually make sense.

What makes the game so addictive? The double and triple letter and word tiles are back, making strategy very important as you find words to maximize points.

Also, unlike Words With Friends, there’s a time limit! Each round lasts for two minutes per player, meaning that there are 4 minutes of gameplay per round and then a winner. This makes for faster gameplay as there are less three and four-day lulls in competition (oh and don’t worry, if you don’t have two minutes to spare all at once you can pause the game and resume later without losing your progress).

Finally, there are power-ups! At the beginning of each game, you choose at least one power-up to use during the game. Freeze – which freezes the timer for about 20 – 30 seconds at the end of each round, Inspiration – which gives you three hints per round, and Scramble – which moves the board around, helping you to see more words and making new letter combinations possible.

The only downside to this is the idea of “tokens.” Just like the good ol’ days at the arcade, you’ve got to have these to play. Zynga will start you off with 16 of these. From there, you can pay for them or wait for one token to rejuvenate every 20 minutes. That’s quite a while to wait once you’ve gotten addicted, however, especially when you consider that you’ll spend them to use extra power-ups too. At the most you’ll use two tokens per round.

We hate trying to sway you one way or the other here at DrJays, but you should really download this app (available in both free and premium versions in the App Store as well as on Facebook and coming soon to the Android Market) really soon. The author deleted Words With Friends from his iPhone within hours of playing it.

If you’re looking for a good game, feel free to look me up. My username is ChrisJTheGenius.

Bookmark to: