Want a text-based puzzle game that will stretch your brain, help you relax and, heck, maybe even teach you some new words? Sticky Terms is the game you’ve been searching for.
Created by 28-year-old iOS game developer Philipp Stollenmayer, it’s a playable head-scratching lexicon of words covering a wide array of languages. The game presents each word as a puzzle, torn into between two and five pieces. It’s up to you, the player, to arrange them into a completed word. No timers, failures or high scores apply.
And you know what? It’s kind of addictive.
As with many puzzle games, the idea behind Sticky Terms is straightforward. But it’s the execution that makes it fun. Words aren’t divided up neatly into letters like an anagram. Instead, the letters themselves get torn apart. What looks like an “F” could actually be an “E,” or a “C” could be a “G.”
At the end, once the letters have snapped satisfyingly into place, you get a translation for your word from whichever language it’s in. While you won’t learn another language playing Sticky Terms, you might pick up some nifty slang.
Sticky Terms will make you think
“Comedy Central has these micro commercial bumpers, which only consist of animated typography, re-acting a specific scene,” Stollenmayer, Sticky Terms’ creator, told Cult of Mac. “I was inspired by them, and began to think of what this does to the meaning of the words. I made a few experiments, and was fascinated how the perception of the word ‘concept’ when you just snapped a small bit to the ‘P,’ making it ‘concert.’ In the moment of the snap, it changed its associations, even though it hasn’t visually changed that much.”
Photo: Philipp Stollenmayer
Stollenmayer, who lives in the Netherlands, has explored mind-contorting typographical games before. In the twisted Sometimes You Die, written messages form the backdrops of the surreal black-and-white platform game. At the time of that game’s release, Stollenmayer told me that the game’s unique visuals were inspired by the kind of typographical experiments seen in Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
Sticky Terms is far more relaxing than Sometimes You Die. But it bears all the same stylish hallmarks.
“It’s for commuters who want easy entertainment on the train, gamers needing a break from intense boss fights, and sophisticated toilet-goers hungry for some food for thought,” Stollenmayer said. “It’s accessible, not too hard, and frustration-free.”
Interested? Sticky Terms debuted Monday. It’s available for free in the App Store.
