Game Info
GAME NAME: Word Search by POWGI
DEVELOPER(S): Lightwood Games
PUBLISHER(S): Lightwood Games
PLATFORM(S): Nintendo Wii U
GENRE(S): Puzzle
RELEASE DATE(S): April 16th, 2015
There are sometimes when I get home from work and the best way to unwind is to throw on a good simplistic puzzle game that I can relax with and just play. Some of my favorite examples are Picross, Crosswords and more recently Pokemon Shuffle. Lightwood Games’ Word Search by POWGI manages to entertain with a trivial but straight forward electronic edition of the age old paper classic.
I wasn’t sure what POWGI was when I first started the game so doing my due diligence I found that it refers to Puzzle on Word Games, Inc. I also found that there are a bunch of different puzzlers that Lightwood Games has made for the iOS and Android market and that this is the first that has been ported over to the Wii U. They have gracefully ported over the title with over 300 puzzles that will keep you busy for a while.
The controls can be used via the stylus on the GamePad’s touchscreen, which is the most accurate way, or the WiiMote. Maybe I had too much coffee during my play test but my cursor on the screen was shaking like a crackhead was holding the controller. This brings me into the best part of the Wii U version, multiplayer. My wife and I were playing single player taking turns and literally pointing to the words on screen. I saw a little press “A” controller option on the left and was like, “Hey, Let’s see if we can do 2 players.” Well you can do up to 5 players and I would recommend playing like this as it adds some competition.
A few suggestions that would have added to the game for competitive multiplayer would have been a single player time attack with online leaderboards or profiles to keep track of who scores the most word finds for wins and losses. Just a few minor additions would certainly add a whole lot of value to the title.
The developers kept the game light weight and cut out all the fluff in the graphics and art side of things. I don’t mind this as it looks clean and doesn’t clutter things up. The soundtrack consists of a few similar in nature loops but I rather enjoyed them and didn’t ever feel like they became annoying or repetitious.
The Recommendation
I really enjoyed my time with Word Search by POWGI. It doesn’t try to be anything then what it insinuates and that by all means isn’t a bad thing. Some other fun modes would have helped the title go a long way but as it sits now, fans of the paper and pen version will be glad to have this electronic version.