That Meg Girl

With UnWord, each game is one minute long, designed for casual play. The limited-time mechanic is a common motivator in puzzle games, but here, one minute prohibits players from fully taking advantage of the puzzle. With so many letters and so many combinations, the minute limit means never being able to use every combination, so no obsessively perfect scores, and no chance to even type all the words you can find. Instead of an exciting motivator, the time limit made the goals feel impossible.

The press release that originally intrigued me to download, play, and review this game referred to “thousands of word combinations”, and I couldn’t help feeling like the one-minute time limit directly blocks players from accessing those combinations. I kept looking around for casual mode, or hoping to unlock bonus time, or untimed levels, but instead I kept feeling like I was missing puzzles, like I was prohibited from accessing a game I’d have wanted to play. UnWord felt like a solid prototype or beta, with one mechanic in desperate need of work.