Mini Words Collection

Genre: Compilation / Puzzle / Educational

Players: 1

.

Review:

Mini Words Collection, released on Nintendo Switch in 2022, is a Compilation of three Puzzle games with an Educational component: Mini Words, originally released as Mini Words – Minimalist Puzzle on PC in 2019, Mini Words: Polyglot, originally released on PC in 2021, and Pathfinders: Mini Words, originally released on PC in 2021.

While these are technically separate games, all three are virtually identical when it comes to their gameplay, where players are given a group of letters and must create paths within those letters to spell out words based on hints at the side of the screen. The form these hints take differs based on the game – Mini Words tells you if it’s a noun, verb, adjective and so on. Mini Words: Polyglot tells you what the translation of the word in another language is. And Pathfinders: Mini Words provides you a picture of the thing the word describes. Apart from this, these games all control exactly the same.

This is a problem, because the controls in this game are horrible. I do not understand why, in a game that seems designed for young children, this game’s controls were unnecessarily made so obtuse. To give you an idea, selecting the letters to form your word requires you to press and hold down the “A” button on the letter starting the word, moving the directional pad to the next letter in the word, then pressing “R” to lock in that letter, and only releasing the “A” button when you have finished locking in the last letter. I cannot imagine why they opted for this instead of simply selecting the letters with a single button while making letters that aren’t legal moves greyed-out.

Also, oddly, this game does not seem to support the touchscreen, even though it recognizes the touchscreen. When you use the touchscreen, it deselects whatever letters you have currently selected, so it does detect the touchscreen being used… but you can’t select letters with the touchscreen, nor can you use it to choose menu options. So… that’s weird.

Beyond the bizarre control scheme issues, there’s not really much here to latch on to as far as gameplay goes. You’re just selecting letters to form words, over and over again. There may be a few words you need to form from the same group of letters, but otherwise, this is just repetitive, boring, and not at all fun.

The presentation is pretty miserable too. Two out of the three games here don’t have any interesting imagery beyond a flat background with a few geometric shapes, and absolutely no music. Pathfinders: Mini Words does at least have characters from the game Pathfinder: Memories going through a few different poses as you’re solving puzzles, and it’s backed by some relatively pleasant New Age-style music, but this does little to make up for the fact that two-thirds of this package looks and sounds incredibly bland, and three-thirds of this package features incredibly bland gameplay.

I suppose I could talk about how this package’s $4 price tag could be considered a decent deal for three games… three nearly-identical, absolutely boring games. But at this point, do I really need to get into that?

Mini Words Collection is not a worthwhile game collection, you’re not going to find any enjoyable Puzzles here, and you’re not going to find a particularly engaging Puzzle game experience. There is just not much here worth playing, and even the low price doesn’t change how little enthusiasm I have for this package. Skip it.

tl;dr – Mini Words Collection is nominally a Compilation of three Puzzle games with an Educational component, but all three games play nearly-identically, having players use a small jumble of letters to spell out words. However, all three games have terrible controls and boring gameplay, and all but one of the three games has a drab and lifeless presentation. Even at a low $4, I cannot recommend this snoozefest of a game.

Grade: D+

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