The New Words with Friends 10/17/14

Today's review is for the New Words with Friends by Zynga.    You know, the game that is not Scrabble.

Image from Vulture Beat

In case your aunt hasn't started a game with you yet, Words with Friends is almost identical to the classic board game Scrabble.  Zynga, the company that got you hooked building virtual farms, is responsible for this game which allows you to challenge other people you have added on Facebook when one of you is using the bathroom.

Image from AppScout

                        
The game has two players, you and presumably a relative (my opponent is usually my mom) take turns creating words with a random set of seven lettered tiles.  As the game progresses, the "pool" will run out of replenishable letters, and the player who plays all of their tiles first ends the game.  Whoever has the highest score, wins.  Some spaces on the board allow for bonuses, such as extra points to the letter landing on the space, or additional points for the word itself (which is awesome if you can land a word on multiple "Double Word" spaces).

If you are using the old app, you're going to be prompted to "Update" to the new one.  This is a misnomer, as the New Words with Friends is an entirely different app.  It's a little cumbersome downloading the new one and uninstalling the old one just to continue playing against that one friend who is totally using a cheat app, because let's face it, Becky that sat behind you in Economics cannot spell hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia on her own.

So what's different about the "New" Words with Friends?  The app runs a lot better than the old version.  The old version with hang and freeze and crash incessantly.  So far, after two weeks of playing it, I haven't had any issues.  Second, new Google Play Achievements, because human beings need positive reinforcement for wasting time!  Third, there are a lot of new features, such as the ability to look up the definition of a played word and new random challenge matches.  This is a great upgrade, and it is still offered as a free download.  If you haven't upgraded yet, I would recommend doing so!