PN Review: Word Search by POWGI (3DS & WiiU eShop)

Seek and find puzzles, a common pass time or hobby for many people. I remember doing these in school for extra credit, trying to finish as fast as possible as if it meant something. Now you can do these classic puzzles on the go or at home with “Word Search by POWGI” from Lightwood Games, for the Nintendo 3DS and WiiU. Word Search by POWGI is a simple game. You can choose from 28 different puzzle themes like Rhyme Time, Animal Kingdom, Sports and many more. Each contains 12 puzzles giving you a whopping 336 different puzzles (324 in the WiiU version).

After you choose the category of your choice you’re given a list of words and a grid of jumbled letters, that’s it. Shockingly there was no timer, no score … No motivation. This was one of my main problems with the game. In order to make things more interesting it would have been great to add a little friendly competition or at least a timer for a bit of a challenge. While both versions are pretty much the same, the WiiU game does offer up an additional mode where you can play with up to 5 people but I sensed that my player 2 was kind of bored with this feature. I highly recommend getting the 3DS version if your thinking about buying it. Seeing as I have no idea when I will ever sit down to play my WiiU console and choose the Word Search game out of all the other ones I could play.

In the WiiU version of ‘Word Search’ you can use the gamepad or the Wiimote when playing. The words you’ll be searching for are shown on the gamepad screen and the right side of the TV screen as well. You can use the stylus to highlight words or the Wiimote while pointing at the TV screen. In the 3DS version the words are shown on the upper screen and the grid is on the touch screen. Everything about how the game plays is perfectly fine in my opinion, but the lack of variety is really killing me here.

While I do think seek and finds can be entertaining when you need a quick fix or time killer, Word Search by POWGI is a very bland attempt at what could have been a fun pastime. Add some challenges or different ways to play, a couple different music tracks (besides the one that continuously plays on the background) a bit of customization, some unlockables, this could be a really fun game. I think people who love seek and find puzzles could get past some of these things and enjoy Word Search by POWGI, after all it isn’t a horrible game it just needs an upgrade, especially if they’re going to charge the steep price of $7.99 (wowza!). So if you’re into word puzzles and you don’t mind the overly simple-ness of this game checkout the demo on the Nintendo eShop before you buy it.