Player Select

When Apple Arcade launched, I was so excited, thinking how brilliant it was to have access to full games - no purchases or ads necessary - and I was going to try each and every one! I'm sure you can guess how that turned out. But I am trying to dip in more often, and there were a handful of recent game additions that caught my eye - this one included. Who doesn't love a free puzzle?

It's in the Game

I've seen a few different apps offering this kind of thing. A page full of puzzles that refreshes each day, so you play what you like, you level up, you keep going day after day. What's great about it is the choice. I don't like all the puzzles - crosswords are fine, but here they swing very American, so I don't always get it. ("Building toy originally produced by Ohio Art." Sorry, what now?)

But Connected is a lot of fun, where you group 16 random tiles into four batches. It's just like Only Connect's Wall round, only right in the palm of my hands. We probably should give a shout out to Secret Word, as well, which is Fanatee's take on Wordle but for six-letter words instead of five.

The design isn't entirely as smooth or polished as I might otherwise expect from an Apple-endorsed game: a few too many colours, the text is very basic, and pop-up screens take up too much real estate. It's not entirely distracting, because it's an app built on wordplay, not graphics, but the thought does keep popping into my head that it could look better.

Thoughts

This is exactly the sort of game that is perfect to have on your phone. If you're a hardcore word puzzle fan, you'll be dipping into it every day to maintain that streak. If, like me, you occasionally think you should give your brain a quick workout, it's there to pick up whenever you want and play whichever game takes your fancy. I've played a couple of days here and there, and dropped it for now because life gets in the way, but I'll be keeping it on my phone.

For that flexibility, it's a 3 out of 5, with points deducted for the design and the Americanisms.

Rating: 3 / 5