Electronic Arts has been on quite an Apple-branded mobile kick lately, and why not? The platform (iPhone, iPod Touch) is easy to develop for and the returns are great – especially when developers find the pricing sweet spot.
In addition to a number of their core titles (Madden, Rock Band, Sims franchises), EA Mobile has been bringing Apple’s mobile platforms a healthy dose of casual gaming as well. These include a number of board and dice games, such as Boggle. For those that have never played Boggle in any of its forms, the concept is simple: Players roll a 4 x 4 or 5 x 5 grid of lettered dice around to shuffle the letters and form as many three or more connected lettered words as they can before a timer goes off. The player receives a point for every three or four letter word and an additional point for each letter thereafter (five letters = 2 points, six letters = 7 points, etc…). The connections between letters can go in any direction – up, down, left, right, or diagonal.
Boggle for the iPhone and iPod Touch has a few different play options to choose from, with default settings and Quick Play giving players three minutes to form as many words as they can. Other option outside of Quick Play can be turned on to make the first and last letters of words spelled switch places, adding a puzzle mechanic that is as difficult to master as it is to put down.
Words formed and points earned in any mode help to unlock Achievements within the game, but since there is no multiplayer beyond Pass ‘n Play, nor any Facebook Connect functionality, these Achievements do not hold the addictive qualities that they do on other systems or even within other games on this platform. Oddly enough, the more addictive thing to peruse in-game are the Statistics – Boggle keep track of e v e r y t h i n g. One such thing is the number of Bad Guesses a player makes throughout their play history, and this is really my only gripe with the game. I have a number of bad guesses thanks to cuss words not being accepted, and that really grinds my adult gears. WAY TO SOIL MY STATS WITH LACK OF FILTH IN YOUR LEXICON.
Knowing that a game is only going to last about three minutes really gets me at the core of my love of pick-up-and-play-on-the-go-gaming. The game is priced just right (currently price $0.99 – 50% off for the holidays!) for impulses of all kinds to enjoy, despite the landlocked in-game dictionary having never developed a sailors tongue. “TITS” is acceptable though, so that is cool!
Posted by Eric J 
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Eric J