WordsUp is a fun strategic word-based board game for between 2 and 4 players. Each player takes it in turns to place letter tiles on to a game board to form words and score points. Unlike other word games, WordsUp allows you to stack letters on top of those already on the board, changing those words and forming new ones.
The more tiles there are in each word you form, the more points you score. As the stacks of tiles keep getting higher, so do the scores. Can you score the most points and become the WordsUp champion?
You can play local WordsUp games against your friends (hot-seat or “pass and play”) or against the computer, or can play network games against other players over the internet. The computer players have four difficulty levels, from “beginner” through to “expert” if you fancy a real challenge. You can set local games up with any combination of human or computer players.
WordsUp was originally released for Windows 8 at the start of this year, but is now also available for all Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 devices (including those with low memory). Internet games can be played across all platforms. WordsUp is a universal app, so buying for Windows Phone will also include the Windows 8 version and vice versa.
WordsUp can be downloaded from the Windows Phone Store, priced US$1.29, £0.99, €1.29. All features of WordsUp are available in the free trial, so that you can fully evaluate the game before buying. The Windows 8 version is available too. Please give them a try!
The Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 versions of WordsUp were created with MonoGame. The Windows Phone 7 version is built on Microsoft’s XNA framework. About 90% of the sourcecode is shared identically between all three projects. The remaining code differences are all related to the XAML UI and to different methods of interacting with the operating systems themselves. I don’t believe any of the actual XNA or MonoGame code had to be made platform specific at all. Great work MonoGame team!