Words With Freds

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Words With Freds, not to be confused with the mobile game Words With Friends, is a family-friendly Puzzle game released on Nintendo Switch in 2022. Although it was developed by Mokuzai Studio, the developer behind the Love series of challenging Platformers, Words With Freds bears little resemblance to those games, instead playing like a cross between the classic Puzzle games Hangman and Mastermind. Or, if you look at more modern games in this genre, there is of course the mobile game Wordle.

In this game, players must guess a hidden five-letter word by spelling out other five-letter words with an on-screen keyboard using either a cursor controlled with traditional gamepad controls, or using direct inputs via the touchscreen. The game will only accept actual words (and its dictionary seems to be reasonably comprehensive), and with each guess, it will tell you which letters are in the word and wrongly-placed, which letters are in the word and correctly-placed, and which letters aren’t in the word at all. Using this, players must guess the hidden word within six guess attempts.

This is a fairly simple game, and a single play session can be completed in a few minutes, or even under a minute if you’re lucky enough to make a really good guess. However, its simplicity is understandable given the game’s tiny $1 price tag, and I found it to be surprisingly compelling despite this simplicity. If you enjoy word puzzles, you’ll find this to be a superb time-waster, and if you’re trying to bulk up your vocabulary, I feel like this would be a great supplement for that.

One of the other nice surprises here are the number of presentation options available – the game uses pixelated letters with simple backgrounds, but players have a wide range of background textures and color schemes to pick from, as well as five different synthesized songs to play in the background. I didn’t find any of those songs to be particularly catchy, but it’s nice to have the variety regardless.

I suppose my biggest complaint with this game is that there aren’t more gameplay options – you can’t change to six-letter words, or play with different game rules. While there are plenty of display options, and the game does keep track of players statistics, there’s no variation from one game to the next. But… again, for $1, this can be easily forgiven.

For those unaware, this is the first game I’m reviewing as a part of the Patreon All-Patron Budget Vote, and if it’s any indication, it has me optimistic that there could be a whole slew of smaller inexpensive Nintendo Switch games out there just waiting to be discovered. Yes, Words With Freds is a small and simple experience, but for $1 I feel like anyone who’s looking for a cheap word-based Puzzle game will more than get their money’s worth here.

tl;dr – Words With Freds is a $1 Puzzle Game that plays like a cross between Hangman and Mastermind, and while it’s a simple game, it’s surprisingly compelling and has a fair amount of presentation options. If you’re craving an inexpensive word Puzzle game, this will be a great choice.

Grade: B

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Puzzle Game, Best Value ($1), Most Overlooked, The “Wow, this game was way better than I expected!” Award

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