Steve

I like games that offer the subtle blend of education with fun. That's why I decided to checkout Thomas and the Magical Words.

Thomas is Viqua Games (called Viquasoft inside the game) first offering. It's offered through their website viquagames.com on the now standard free trial and retail key model. The game suffers from the common problem of a trial period that doesn't allow you to finish a game, though in their defense that's more a product of a long, engaging game than a short trial period. The game shows few of the first game jitters you might expect, exhibiting a level of polish and graphical quality it usually takes fledgling companies a few go-rounds to achieve. The graphics are very kid friendly, perhaps enough so to deter adults who might otherwise have enjoyed the game.

At its core, Thomas is a word game. While the game is wrapped in a story of a young wizard and his failing of magical words class, once you get past the bit where his Uncle banishes him into a dictionary to learn a lesson (a dictionary, may I add, inhabited by an evil word spirit. His uncle is not a nice man). You can generally ignore all that other than remembering to save the little animals you find on your way to return them to uncle's pet shop. Not so much for Uncle's sake as because leaving animals in a book is bad form. Also, they give you stuff.

Like many a word game before it, Thomas mechanics borrow heavily from scrabble. You have a rack of tiles consisting of letters and blanks, and a variously shaped board on which to play those tiles to form words. The board represents Thomas' immediate environment, generally consisting of open spaces between a few islands. In later levels, the open spaces become more crowded, forcing you to make more careful word choices. You help Thomas progress from island to island by creating bridges out of words using your tiles. Tiles are refilled as you use them up. The goal of most stages is to reach a gate on an island across the play area. Many stages will have animals to rescue on intermediate islands and some few involve playing a sort of hangman mini game by getting clues on successive islands until you reach a solution.

The mini game was somewhat disappointing in the sense that we have yet to not get a word on the first set of clues. It is possible we're just very good at hangman, but I would say its' more likely that you just get too many chances at each island. In addition to the basic tile connecting gameplay you get bonus items as you progress that can be used to get extra blanks, dump your rack for new tiles, or destroy previously placed letters. These bonus items are the key to forming the ridiculously long words that the game demands for high scores. Interestingly, however, those looking just to get from island to island reasonably efficiently without regard to score or displaying their word length prowess will find the power up items largely superfluous other than the occasional extra blank to simplify a decision.

Playing for score adds an extra layer of depth, particularly as the game progresses and scrabble style X2 and X3 spaces begin to appear on the board. It also gives rise to strange plays that wouldn't exist in scrabble with opponent, such as having the tiles to make LAYERING and instead playing LAY, then LAYER, then LAYERING to score part of the word three times. While this sort of play doesn't get in the way for people looking to get through the game for the cute story line, it adds a lot for those of us who've become used to obsessing over both score and vocabulary.

Anyone into word games or just looking for a good quasi-educational game they can play with their kids should check out Thomas. It has both quality learning elements and a level of both visual and gaming polish normally absent from this type of offering.

__________________
GM is Supporting the WWF