The latest release from indie developer GanaLila sees iOS gamers helping their own “next-generation AI machine”, or robot, to develop its vocabulary through an addictive word puzzle game. Puzzle games, such as the infamous Words with Friends, have shown incredible increases in popularity over the past 12 months, with many achieving great results on both iOS and Android devices. C.U.B.I.P.L.E.X. has initially been released only in the iTunes store and encourages players to top the leader board and develop the intelligence of their robot friend to beat other players.
The concept of the game is rather simple, yet very entertaining, as players are given a grid of jumbled letters with which they have to create words and, like in many cases, the bigger the better. The more letters used in each turn, the more points earned for you and your robot companion. While the game may initially seem quite straightforward, each letter is displayed on a cube, allowing players to rotate to reveal other letters on the board. Players can gain better score averages through creating longer words, but each letter tile is a different colour, representing various values for each cube, offering a range of different ways to better your chances at topping the score board.
As with many puzzle games, unlocking in-app achievements is a big incentive in C.U.B.I.P.L.E.X. Players have a total of 5 minutes to create as many words as they can from the grid of mismatched letters, with all words required to be at least three characters in length.
Being an Android user myself, I’m hoping that the popularity of C.U.B.I.P.L.E.X. on iOS devices, already reaching a 4+ rating in the App Store, will be enough to encourage GanaLila to expand to the Android Operating System, because this looks like one game to watch in the charts for 2014.