BookWorm

“BookWorm Deluxe” is about crosswords, as its name could suggest. Our host is a cute worm who give us help and tips during the game. The game basically consists on looking up for words, hidden in a board of mixed letters tiles. The tiles are organized in several columns by which the tiles go falling down as you use them to form words.
The main characteristics of the game are:
- Bonus Words: appear at the beginning of the second level beneath the bookworm. If you can complete a bonus word you’ll get a hefty bonus to your score. Once you complete a word, a new bonus word is displayed.
- Reward Tiles: green tiles appear randomly and increase word scores. Earn gold tiles by creating words containing 5 letters or more. Gold tiles are worth more than green tiles. Combine more than one green tile in a word for higher scores.
- Scoring: you score points based on the length of each word, the scarcity of the letters in the word, whether or not there are reward tiles in the word, and what level of the game you’re on.
- Burning tiles: tiles on fire appear randomly and you have to prevent that those reach the bottom of the board. If they do, the game is over.
The game provides two different modes to play:
- Classic game: the game works as explained before.
- Action game: the game is the same but the burning tiles fall down much faster so the game gets really harder.
The game is organized by levels. Each time you reach the amount of words for the level, you pass to the next one. When you pass the level, the board stays the same, so you begin the new level exactly how you finished the previous one. As you play, game tips will appear to help you learn how the game works. If you want to stop tips from showing, you can change that setting from the Options menu, or form the pop-up message.
When you first enter the game, you’ll be asked for a player name and you’ll see the welcome screen with the following options:
- Welcome / Change player: the first time there’s no existing player. After you create one or more, they’ll be saved. When you enter into this submenu, you’ll be asked for a name as a new player. It’s possible to have a list of different players and record their performance. This way, you can play home tournaments with family and friends.
- Classic game: use this option to start playing in this mode.
- Action game: use this option to start playing in this mode.
- Hall of fame: lists the top records of the players.
- Quit game: no further explanation required.
When you’re playing the game, you can always click on the OPTIONS button to access to a pop-up menu with these options: music volume, sound volume, full screen, show hints, hardware acceleration, custom cursors, show definitions, help, credits, and return to game.
You can try this game for 60 minutes before you buy the licensed version. Also, you can try this game online, without the need of downloading the setup file. If you like it, you can buy this game for only 19.95 dollars, right from the Oberon Media Game Center, on the Web.
About the system requirements, is not that big computer that you need to run this game. Take a look to the list:
- Windows XP/Vista
- Processor: P-300
- Memory: 32 MB RAM
- DirectX: 5.0