I should probably start this post off with some pleading apology after saying I would do a game review soon and then vanishing for weeks. But what happened was, I started playing older games, and I kept bouncing from one to the next as soon as I finished a run in each. Nothing worth a review, but I had a good time, and it helped me to avoid doom scrolling. I’m calling that a win.
Anywho, when it comes to technology, we live in strange times. My phone, despite being two years old now, has more RAM and storage space than my first PC, as well as more video RAM, better sound quality, and a higher screen resolution. And yet, when it comes to mobile games and apps, we live in a time of virtual garbage.
This is why I initially had hope for subscription models that would make games better by ditching ads, “microtransactions,” (100 dollars for a bag of digital currency is not a micro anything) and loot boxes. But many games on these services are the same mobile shite with the exploitation removed, and that doesn’t change the fact that most simply aren’t fun to play. They still desperately peddle daily login gifts to try and keep people on the treadmill, but when it comes to the actual gameplay between all the lousy menus and worthless presents, there’s not enough incentive to keep going.
Which brings me to Word Trails, courtesy of Netflix’s subscription. It’s pretty much like a lot of other word puzzle games. The top half of the screen is similar to a crossword grid, and the lower half has a circle with letters to link and form words. Any words spelled that aren’t on the grid go into a bonus pot, which eventually fills up to award a pittance amount of gold.
I played a lot of this at the hospital. No, like 1,000 levels worth, and for some reason, I kept playing it when I got back home, so I’m now at level 1,348. For a while, there was a pride issue motivating me, as each level has a little text at the top saying “X% of players have completed this.” Well, I’m now at the point where that number is 0.2% of players, and I can assure you, it’s not that players couldn’t finish a puzzle. It’s just that they gave up playing long before reaching this level of Hell.
What’s so wrong with it? Well for one thing the words used feel like a list generated by AI. Note, I’m not saying I know it is AI slop. I’m saying it feels like AI slop. This is because too many levels use the same words over and over. Someone playing a few minutes at a time with sessions spaced out might not notice at first, but eventually, even they’d have to take note of the number of times the same solutions pop up. But having played for hours at a time because I had nothing else to do besides nap, I started to get annoyed, and then aggravated by the lack of variety.
Which makes it even worse if this isn’t an AI generated list of words, because that means a person made up these puzzles knowing how little variety they had, and instead of just ending the game at a predefined peak, they circled back around for the worst hamster wheel of spelling ever.
This doesn’t even touch on the problem that the dictionary is missing tons of valid words. Each time I’d enter one and be denied, I would immediately go online to check real dictionaries and see that yes, it is a real word, and whoever set up this spelling game is an idiot.
You know the missing word that chafes my intimate bits the worst? App. I’m playing on my phone on an app, and yet the app won’t recognize the word APP? Dafuq?
Lastly, there’s still a currency being offered for solving puzzles, which is used to buy hints, either a random letter added to the grid, or a more expensive option to fill in a specific box. I’m guessing that some people ended up giving up after using all their gold on hints, because the cost of the hints versus the crappy amounts you get for solving puzzles is still part of the old “free to pay” model. You only get a pittance by filling up the bonus words jar or by solving all the levels in a “city,” which is 20 puzzles. Daily logins are equally shitty as rewards go, so anyone wanting a little help would either have to log in daily for a month without playing to recover funds, or they could delete the app and do something more meaningful, like pick scabs, maybe.
I could go on, but let’s just make this one short and sweet. Word Trails is yet another mobile piece of trash that’s just distracting enough to get you through a bank line, without ever crossing over into being fun. I give it 2 stars, and I wish fervently for the rapid economic death of the “free” mobile gaming market.