Full disclosure – I had been avoiding the POWGI series from Lightwood Games for a while now. And it feels like the developers felt the same, with this latest game being the first release of 2023.
Burnout had set in from doing hundreds upon hundreds of the same puzzles, some of which felt like the wheels were coming off the creative train. But, as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and that is definitely the case here. Word Maze by POWGI proves that there is still a lot of mileage to go with a really fun take on wordsearches.
Fans of POWGI games will know this is not the first riff on wordsearches to come from Lightwood Games. There have been quite a few already: One Word by POWGI had you searching for the only correct spelling of a particular word in a grid of the same letter and Sixty Words by POWGI had you doing very much the opposite. Word Maze by POWGI trumps them both, though Sixty Words had a secondary artistic approach to finding the words, and it feels like Word Maze could have benefitted from that also.
Unlike a traditional wordsearch, in Word Maze by POWGI, every letter is used. You are given a topic that should help you find the words you need, as well as the first word in the chain. It is then up to you to find the remaining words by following the route like a maze.
Each word you find links seamlessly to the next word. The difficulty comes in finding the starting letter for the next word and then following it through. There is also only ever one correct path to take; you may find the correct word you are looking for, but by following an incorrect route. The game does a good job of letting you know this, so that you don’t get too far along a chain and once a correct word has been found, the path is lengthened so that you are unable to choose those letters again.
Words can be found in any orthogonal direction, both forwards and backwards. Each puzzle gets easier as you find words due to the reduced number of letters left. You can also usually begin to spot routes as you play through more and more.
Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Well, Word Maze by POWGI has a few tricks up its sleeve. Firstly, the words you need to find aren’t made available unless you use the traditional hint system. Without this, the only help you are getting is the rather generic sounding theme.
But, despite all this, you will be surprised by how much you may know about some of the more obscure sounding subjects. Certain topics include Animal Sounds, US States (a trickier one for many living outside of the USA anyways), Words Meaning ‘Smart’, Things in a Purse and Cocktails. At first, naming so many of these sounds like a waste of time, but you’d be surprised how many you can reel off when you start finding the maze trails. Couple that with just the right amount of repetition and your vocabulary should just about be able to cope.
Then there is the fact that each theme has more than one grid to complete. How many you ask? Six in actuality. Times that by 120 different themes and you are looking at 720 word mazes to complete. It is a hefty completion, though only 192 are required for the full collection of 1000 Gamerscore. Some things will (hopefully) never change, and POWGI games being a relatively easy completion for achievement hunters is one of them.
Mazes can vary massively in size too. Earlier ones in each theme start off generally a lot smaller than they end up, but some themes end on smaller ones again. But, as I always tell the wife, size doesn’t matter. Some of the smaller ones can be just as tricky, particularly if it is not a theme you are massively clued up on.
Word Maze still retains the same look, feel and sound of all previous POWGI game. By now though, these have come full circle. What initially started as a boring UI with inane bleeps and bloops called music, have now become the hallmarks of the series. These games wouldn’t be the same without them.
And then of course there are the associated puns with each completion. These have never and will never get old.
Word Maze by POWGI is a timely reminder of how fun these unique puzzle games can be. And this is easily up there with some of the best ones to come out of the minds of Lightwood Games. If you had been suffering from a bit of POWGI burnout, Word Maze is here to remind you that they’re not going anywhere, anytime soon.
