Animated Word Games

When I was working at Mattel I had the opportunity to develop a proposal for "Millennial Scrabble." Due to various exigencies, my proposal never went beyond a few interactive Director files, but it was a wonderful opportunity to develop some of my wackier (or is that Oaquier?) ideas for truly animated word games. When my daily snack of Milk and Cookies included this game of "Word Up," I fairly writhed in conceptual justification. Here, at last, a kind of Boggle-like Scrabblish thing that is truly dynamic, computer-specific, unique, bordering on new.

You're going to need to be a bit patient - unless you elect to download the "free trial version" immediately it takes a while for the full glories of the multimediated introduction to play out. But it's well worth it. The two big innovations are tiles that disappear as soon as a word is spelled, to be replaced by new tiles, and the "Power Ups" - special animated tiles that include constantly changing vowels, consonants, multipliers, wild tiles and various explosives that blow tiles away - adding a wonderful sense of tension, variety and novelty to the game experience. The sound effects beautifully support and enhance player involvement. Word Up is great fun and points the way to a whole new genre of dynamic, interactive word games.

All of which demonstrates conclusively that a good idea will always succeed - maybe not for the company it was developed for or for the person who developed it. But sooner or later, if your idea is good enough, somebody, somewhere will make it happen. WordUp does me proud. Now, as for the rest of the ideas I have about dynamic word games....