Word games are a dime a dozen on the App Store. For us though, it's going to be very hard to beat Lexic as a go to game when it offers so much.

A lot of games promise a lot of modes but never deliver sufficiently different gameplay for these to be worthwhile. It turns out that in fact, although the Quest mode is certainly the most compelling, each mode is worthy of playing through. Especially for the Feats - the achievement system that unlocks new skins and tile colours for the game to make it look how you want. This is a big part what makes Lexic so addictive - the collector in you wants to see them all.

Quest is the most rich mode. The objective is to keep words flowing without getting wiped out by a bomb tile - black squares that tick down whenever you make a new word. Using a gold tile in a word scores more points, and the level advances when you reach the gold target (on the first level, it's three). Any bombs on the field will be removed when you clear the level. In addition, there's other tiles, like flip tiles which will choose a random letter every turn - virus tiles that if left unchecked will consume the board with their own letter, and metal plated tiles that won't disappear until you use them multiple times.

Cascade mode plays almost identically to Quest - except without bombs or any special tiles. Stasis gives you a grid which doesn't change, so you have to find as many words as possible - duplicate words don't count. And Blackout is really fun - it plays identically to Cascade except once tiles drop off, no new ones drop in from the top. The idea is to see how long you can last - in this one you can make two letter words (the other modes have a minimum of three) as well as being able to tilt your device to move the tiles over to the left or right of the screen.

It has a robust feature set and frankly wonderful presentation that took us by complete surprise.

The controls are spot on, as you'd expect - you draw a translucent line between tiles, which snaps into place if you've formed a word. No problems there. Out of all the games we'll likely play Blackout and Quest most often - but each of the modes feels like it was a well thought out addition. Indeed, you have high score tables for each mode, as well as records that show your best words - you can also pause a game at any time to see which words you've used. And the Feats work very well - they clearly tell you what you need to get to unlock further goodies. Most of which are very stylish - there's a couple we didn't like but the customisation is perfect. Choosing your own themes makes Lexic feel personal.

Lexic is like a diamond amongst the rough. It has a robust feature set and frankly wonderful presentation that took us by complete surprise. So, if you are a word game lover then trust us; Lexic is worth every penny. Do not hesitate to purchase this gem.

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