Thank you Lightwood Games for sending us this game to review!  

Lightwood Games specializes in word games and their latest offering is the Word Puzzles by POWGI bundle which is available for both 3DS and Wii U.  No matter what platform you purchase, you can play it on the other platform without having to re-buy it.  Other than some music differences, the gameplay is identical.  I just wish Nintendo offered cloud save support so my devices could synchronize my progress.

Both versions have 480 puzzles and they are broken down into six different game types:

Word Maze: It looks like a word search, but it has themed words connected together to form a maze.  

Mixups: Find the three similarly themed words in a jumble of letters that you can only use once.

One Word: It’s a word search with only one word to find. It sounds easy until you realize that the word search is made up of only letters in that word!  Solve many of these word puzzles to complete a quote from a famous person.

Flowers: A flower with two letters in the middle needs to have pairs of letters added to the petals to form six-letter words.  Each pair of letters can only be used once!

Circles: Find the missing letter to form words from the letters in three connecting circles

Crossovers: Choose the missing letter that completed both connected words and use those letters unscramble a word with only one clue!

There are various themes for the words including dog breeds, states, colors, clothing, and so forth.  Unfortunately, in some cases, the theme is not revealed until you have completed the puzzle.  Many of the puzzles can be good learning tools, but some of them can stump those with college degrees.  If you get stuck, a hint can usually be revealed by pressing the left and right triggers simultaneously.

Amiibo support is available in this game and you can scan in your Amiibos to have random puzzles generated with the data stored inside of it.  When using our MewTwo Amiibo a word maze was generated with several instances of my husband’s Nintendo ID (IBJamon).  Another time a Mixups game was generated and my husband and I could not figure out the three words with the available letters and no hint or theme provided.  In the end the Amiibo support was a disappointment for us.  Even without the Amiibo functionality, there’s still plenty to do in this game.

Puzzle games in general don’t need stunning visuals.  With that said, some of the word searches for shorter words had larger and blurrier font than ones for longer words.   Everything else looked fine though a little more color wouldn't be a bad thing.

The music in both versions of the game are upbeat and pleasant to listen to.  The Wii U background music has more bass and my home theater took advantage of it nicely.  If you’re not fond of the music it can be disabled along with the sound effects.  The 3DS version of the game supports StreetPass. 

Overall Word Puzzles by POWGI is a cute and challenging game that may be too tough for younger players.  Content wise it’s pretty clean though one of the word puzzles used the word hell.  My favorite game mode was One Word so I could decipher and learn quotes from people like Adolf Hitler, Jerry Seinfeld, Winston Churchill, Bill Gates, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and many more.  Puzzle lovers should check this game out, but if you’re not a word puzzle person, then you’ll be better off parting with $9.99 elsewhere.