Today is word game day here on Rogueliker. I know I basically made that up, but I’ve been tinkering away with a big article about the best roguelike word games, and I was just about ready to put it live. Then Scriver: A Word Game landed in my inbox, and I was charmed by the premise, at least enough to rethink my plans. That was a couple of weeks ago, and here I am now with some impressions to share.
Spoilers: I’ve included Scriver in my main article because this little card game has proven itself to be rather engaging. I’ve been playing and enjoying myself, though I’ll concede now that this is a mobile game first and foremost, and it really does feel like it, even on PC. I don’t mean that in a mean way; it’s just that the presentation and some of the actions were initially intended for swiping fingers and narrow screens, and those origins are somewhat inescapable.
It’s a good thing, then, that the word game itself is really good. The whole thing is wrapped up in a fun theme about an art gallery, complete with critics and patrons. Throughout a run, you must augment yourself by buying pieces of art and vinyl records (instead of Joker cards or artefacts), and chase increasingly high scores.
Your critics want you to impress them with clever words to go alongside your wonderful taste in art. Long story short: you have four turns to earn the score required to advance, and if you don’t meet the total for each new round, it’s back to the ol’ drawing board. Pun somewhat intended.
The interesting twist here is how you score your words. In a lot of games like this one, it’s a simple points x multiplier deal, but here your multiplier is also affected by tickets, which you can also level up through play and via the shop. These tickets work alongside your artworks, and finding synergies between them is the key to success.
You also have patrons who’ll give you extra cash if you complete quests for them (that means doing things in a certain way). For example, you might not be able to play any words that start with a vowel, or you might have to play words of a certain length.
These additional challenges only stretch the grey matter further when you’re already trying to make a word that starts with a vowel, has an even number of letters, and has a high-scoring tile on the third space.
There are several slots for your artworks, and they’re similar to Balatro’s jokers. In Scriver, you’ll find that positioning them is just as important. In fact, developer doughbody has leaned into the placement mechanic, and when you get to the later levels, it’s a must that you position your art display as efficiently as possible.
With a sweet theme and some elegant mechanics, Scriver is a really nice little roguelike word game. I’d say it’s best played on mobile, only because that’s what it was designed for. However, the PC version is still very playable and equally as engaging, so it’s really not a dealbreaker for me, and I’d happily recommend either version.
Scriver: A Word Game is out now on Steam PC (Win) and iOS. I also noted somewhere that an Android version is in the mix, too. I played via access kindly shared by the developer.
