Epic Word Search Collection 2 is pretty much what it says on the tin, except possibly the 'epic' part. A modern day take on the classic Word Search, the game takes this popular puzzle and makes it paperless. There are no frills to make this a stand out video game, it is very simple in its approach and solely for those who want an easy way to pass the time or those who just love a good word search.
There are five categories in total: America, Animals, Shakespeare, Ancient and Journey. These in turn have sub categories once you start playing so, for example, Shakespeare has Romeo and Juliet themed words, Hamlet, and so on. These categories are fused together, and you scroll side to side to change the area of the word search you are looking in. This took a while to get used to, and it's quite a clunky mechanism as you spend a lot of time scrolling to try and get a word started. The top of the screen displays the words in that area, which are colour coded, and once you find them they will disappear from the list as you go. Overall there are over 5000 words in the game with plenty in each puzzle, so there's a decent amount of gameplay to be had.
There is some music to enjoy that's based on the category in question, so Shakespeare has some classical style music playing while you search. It's repetitive, but not too distracting depending on how long you take to complete the puzzle. There's not much to say in terms of visuals as this adopts a simple look, which is all that's needed from a title such as this. The controls are good, responsive and not laggy. The stylus and touch screen are a great pairing for a word search game, emulating the pen and paper normally used for such puzzles.
There are no 'extras' with this game. It is pretty much as you see it, which is good for those who might want something simple. There is StreetPass functionality, but this just shares your score rather than anything particularly exciting. The game might have benefitted from a VS mode (playing online or against CPU), a timed mode or even a create your own word search option.
Conclusion
Epic Word Search collection is very much for a niche market. If you love a good word search and have a 3DS, there is every chance you will enjoy this game. There is a decent amount of gameplay to be had, and at its price it's your call as to whether it's worth the price or worth buying a few word search collection books instead. For those who don't enjoy word searches, it goes without saying that this isn't a download for you.
Comments 8
Same as the first? I loved the first one. I hope there is a holiday edition. Halloween and Xmas game would be nice.
@Eisenbolan Thank you for the kind words. We do actually have content for Christmas and Halloween already, so it's a possibility
Great. Be picking this up soon, nearly finished the first one
@chrisnewman - I'm nearly complete with the first game, the only (major) control issue for me is not being able to complete a word if it is off the screen. The older CrossworDS and Crosswords Plus allowed you to start a word if it was anywhere on screen and automatically scrolled until finished. If you can implement that it would make the experience SO much more polished! As it stands now if even one letter is off the edge you have to stop highlighting and shift the whole screen with the pad. This is especially frustrating on the entire-screen-length words / phrases.
@UsualNoise Thanks for this. I wonder if we can find a workaround. Triggering the scroll when dragging is no problem, but the game is doing some clever stuff for memory management that stops it being possible right now. Only slightly more of the wordsearch than you can see on screen is in memory at once. If it scrolled as you dragged, there would have to be a limit to how far you could drag, otherwise you could end up with a loop that began on a letter it no longer knows about - which means kaboom! Having it stop dragging suddenly might feel odd. Consider it on the list, and we'll try some things
@chrisnewman - Cool. I'm a software engineer myself so I get hardware limitations. Hope you can figure something out though. I'd be fine with a fixed character limit for scrolling while dragging, you could make the limit the longest word possible perhaps. Thanks for responding.
Also wanted to mention there's a bug (in the first game at least) where the word list is doubled at certain times, most noticeable when you're straddling two different grids. I can provide a screenshot if you need it.
@UsualNoise Could you email a screenshot to the support address in the E-Manual or on our web site please?
@chrisnewman - will do that later tonight, thanks!
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