RPG Combat + Boggle = Letter Quest – Grimm’s Journey

Although it’s been out for a while, I just picked up a copy of Letter Quest – Grimm’s Journey for the iPad and have been going to town. I’m a big fan of word games like Boggle, Bookworm and Dungeon Scroll and I thought the RPG elements of Swords and Poker made that game a heck of a lot of fun. Now, Letter Quest is combining similar RPG elements to make something that is very easy to pick up, but offers a slew of variety.

The goal of Letter Quest is simple – given a set of tiles, spell out the best word possible for the greatest number of points. Those points are then turned into attack damage against an opponent. Each attack drops the hit points of your opponent. Bigger words and words using rare tiles equal more damage.

From there, Letter Quest does a really good job of building in RPG elements like armor for protection against counter attacks, potions to heal to keep the battle going, better weapons that do more damage, spell books that increase the power of certain letters and length of words as well as a variety of play styles. For example, some rounds are timed against an opponent, while others need to be completed in a certain number of words. For other monsters, certain letters are not allowed, such as no damage is taken for words that contain the letter A. Then you have the opposite where more damage is done for using certain letters.

Additional variations include having to use top row letters or corner letters. Then there are counter attacks where letters lose their value due to plague or being cracked. Letters can also shuffle out of play after a word is played. Some tiles may become blocked an unplayable, while others may cause damage to you if played. For some rounds, crystals can be used which increase healing, protection and damage done.

Finally, there are the Boss rounds and Crystal Rounds. These are higher level opponents that usually have a special ability or restriction on how tiles can be used. Words may have to be over or under a certain limit to do damage. Or, words may have to start with a vowel. It might that words over 6 letters have no effect, while words of 3 letters do the most damage.

Each round ends with the collection of gems. These gems are used to upgrade weapons and armor as well as buy spellbooks, potions and other abilities.

I think the combination of RPG elements and Boggle like features blend really well together. Letter Quest is simple to learn, but has lots of variety to keep it interesting. Monsters come with unique abilities so you have to employ a little strategy not just spell the same words over and over again.

You can get Letter Quest for free with some ads displayed at the bottom of the screen and out of the way. If you want to directly support the game and remove ads, you can make an in-app purchase of $2.99, which I think is a very fair price for what you get and the amount of time you can spend playing.

I’ve completed 17 levels and have done the first pass on 25 with plenty more still to go. If you’re a fan of words game and want to spice things up a bit, Letter Quest has a lot to offer. You should get plenty of use out of it and I certainly think it has the, "one more level" quality going for it.