Word searches may be perfectly suited for the iPhone, but hunting for words within a grid of scrambled letters always becomes tedious. In order to make such a game fun, the developers would have to give it a new twist. When faced with this opportunity many would try adding power ups and weapons in a hope to engage the player, but there’s no way it would fit in this text-based context... Luckily We Are Colin have come up with an intelligent idea, rather than finding a given list of words, your aim is to scour a 7x7 grid to try and pin down words on a specific topic. It isn’t a huge alteration of the gameplay, but it’s enough to successfully put the game onto the small screen and ultimately make it an enjoyable experience.

You are given 100 seconds to search for these words in the pocket-sized grid and as expected the quicker you complete it in, the more points you receive. To get an even better score you can highlight words backwards or in quick succession to earn yourself multipliers. If you ever get stuck trying to find a word in the topic you can use one of three hints which will reveal one word. Using these hints does decrease your end score and will destroy any multipliers, but discovering all the words before the time runs out can be tricky!

After completing each topic you are given a medal (either bronze, silver or gold), so to achieve the best possible you must create combos and refrain from using hints. Since each word search is randomly created, the best way to gain high scores is to memorise any words that could come up. You need to find seven words each time but they typically come from a list of around twenty. The game does help you by including a practice mode so you can go through word searches without the pressure of a timer. OpenFeint is integrated in the game so your topic scores are posted on the worldwide leaderboards, and there are various achievements for you to earn.

WordSearch Rush comes with two word search packs: beginner; which contains various basic topics, and trial; which has a few topics from each of the other packs available. Every extra pack costs 59p and contains 15 topics. What we really like is that the packs don’t only come in English but also in French, Spanish and German so you can practice your language skills. There is also a 8x8 grid that you can buy too which really ups the difficulty.

We didn’t have many problems with WordSearch Rush but the few that we did became rather irritating. For example in order to restart a word search you need to pause, exit it, wait for the answers to show, go through the results page, and then finally watch the loading screen as it resets the puzzle. This is certainly overcomplicated for something that could be done in just a few seconds at the press of a button. We also found that the load times in general were slightly too long for a pick up and play game that it ventures to be, but it was still mainly fun.

If you like word games then we can definitely recommend WordSearch Rush since it is a great twist on the generally boring paper puzzler. The packs included are definitely enough to keep you satisfied and the ability to purchase more is available if you want. For 59p it’s a decent game.

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