MMOG Play Test - WordSquared

The game is WordSquared, and it is what I would call a casual MMOG. It basically Scrabble on a global scale, with a seeming infinitely large playing field. It's way too addictive, so consider yourself warned.

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1) What is the player experience


The player experience is very much the same as that in the board-game Scrabble, except with the added excitement of seeing the progress viewed by anyone and everyone, both on a scaled back world map, and up close with their individual words.

2) What is the nature of interaction within the world?


One the scrabble board, players can place words with the seven random letters they have been given, and are rewarded with score. On the world map, players are able to place markers about the field to share on Facebook or Twitter, allowing them to showcase their efforts to friends. If the player feels they can't spell anything with their set of tiles, then they can sacrifice a 'life' and receive a new set at random. Spread across the board there are extra lives that you can acquire by spelling a work with a letter placed on top of the life.

3) How do players communicate?


That is where the game doesn't quite fall in line with the typical MMOG standards, there is no way for players to directly interact with each other. There are however some indicators letting you know that other people are playing alongside you. Once, you can in real time see words being placed on the board, with scores flying about. Another is an omnipresent leaderboard to remind you of your spelling impotence. The last such indicator is the world map, where you can see what must be miles of words spread across a blue matrix of pure word.

4) How do players socialize?


Again, the only such mechanism is the ability to send world map locations no your friends via Facebook or Twitter. Implicitly though, you can consider the collaboration of everyones word efforts as socialization.

5) What happens if/when players logout or are dropped from the game?


They really want to start it again. Other than that, there are no consequences, since it is designed to be a casual, 1 minute or 1 hour experience. The only problem that can arise is if you had a word placed on the map, but not committed yet, if you closed and reloaded the page, your word tiles would be back in your 'inventory.'  

6) What do you have to do within the game?


Spell words, accrue points, and show off your bulging literary muscles.

7) What do you think of the game?


It is a game that I can always get into, which is already very familiar to me, and is engineered incredibly well (i.e it's not made with Flash). Every time I load it up I find it very difficult to not play until I place some awesome words.

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Main screen, where the action takes place.

The world map. All that white stuff is words, and the yellow box is the
viewport for the above screenshot. That is a lot of words.

Me about to show off my mad skillz to my Facebook friends.