Fiasco turns spelling into an action-packed race against time

By

Fiasco

I like words. I like writing them, I like spelling them, and I like picking the perfect one for the sentence I’m creating. And I like playing with them, too, if you couldn’t tell from all the word games I choose for reviews.

Fiasco by Blinking Pixels
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $0.99 (promotional price; free version available)

But even if you aren’t a Word Nerd like I am, you’ll probably enjoy Fiasco. It’s a moderately paced competitive spelling game in which you create as many words of three or more letters as you can by dropping tiles, Tetris-style, onto a board.

You can get time and point bonuses for longer words, which is basically the only way to win. Because this game is pretty challenging.

https://youtu.be/LYRpaKxgpN0

Each game occurs over three rounds, and you have a couple minutes at a time to drop your tiles and earn your points. A pretty sound strategy is to buy a point bonus, and then pick a long word you can build from one of your early tiles and spend the entire round working on it. If this gets you an eight-letter word, you’ll basically be unstoppable.

It’s also possible you’ll spend all that time and never draw the right tiles to complete your Omega Word, so I like to work toward compound words.

It’s a very unique and clever game.

Regardless, it gets very heated very quickly, and you can make up for one terrible round with some brains and luck later on. It’s an interesting take on one-on-one wordplay, and it’s a very unique and clever game.

Needless to say, I recommend it. It hits all the right notes without being too terribly stressful. Because you know how I feel about game timers, and this one’s alright.

FiascoGame Name: : Fiasco
The Good: Cool concept, very catchy, and fun to compete against friends.
The Bad: A lot is up to chance, and the decision to have arbitrary coins you spend to play and buy power-ups is fairly confusing.
The Verdict: It’s a word game unlike any I’ve ever played, and it’s well worth a look.
Buy from: App Store – Fiasco! Free – Blinking Pixels

[rating=game5]

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.