We Don’t Imagine these Wordsearches were made by Humans, Let Alone Pirates
How do you jazz up a wordsearch? My mind immediately skips to Balatro, and how you might Balatro-ify wordsearches (damn it, now I’m sketching ideas). But Gametry has a simpler answer: port in some pirates.
The pirate invasion comes in the form of a pixel pirate standing slightly to the left of the wordsearch, a treasure chest to the right, and some piratical words like ‘Shore’ and ‘Cannon’ appearing in the word grid. There are no cannons exploding letters or anything like that (yep, jotting that idea down for the Wordsearch Balatro). It’s just a wordsearch nestled into a piratey frame.
Which is all rather disappointing, if you ask us. The pirate theming is as loose as Longjohn Silver’s longjohns. But for £1.69 we understand the thinking. This is a wordsearch game for people who just want the luxury of not staring at a black and white pad.
The first surprise was that Word Quest Pirates comes with 210 wordsearches. That’s pretty significant, right? I had a quick check of our Take a Break wordsearch magazine (£2.49 from your local stockist) and it has fewer wordsearches. Word Quest Pirates has Take a Break beat.
That’s Better Than a Penny Per Wordsearch
The levels start at a measly 5×5 grid and work up from there. What immediately frustrates me is that you can’t skip straight to the bigger wordsearches. You have to work your way up through each locked stage before getting to something that will remotely tax you. I’m not wholly sure why Word Quest Pirates did it this way, as only kids will get anything out of a tiny grid.
The controls are as good as you could expect from a port of a pen-and-paper game like wordsearches. You can either tap or hold A to start highlighting, and you let go or tap again to complete a word. The game lets you know if you’re right or wrong, crosses off the word for you, and the wordsearch itself lights up to mark where you’ve been. Control-wise Word Quest Pirates is decent.
It’s the puzzles where the ship’s wheel begins to fall off. The same words keep repeating in each puzzle. I have become a master at spotting the word ‘Brine’ in a wordsearch as, inexplicably, Word Quest Pirates wants you to find it roughly fifty or so times. Word Quest Pirates is beholden to nautical words in its wordsearches, but it doesn’t have a huge pool of them. The same words crop up over and over again, which gives Word Quest Pirates a lazy, repeated feel.
The words are placed oddly too. I don’t think I’ve thought about wordsearch layouts as much as I have while playing Word Quest Pirates. My idea of a good wordsearch layout is a mix of vertical, horizontal, diagonal and backwards words. They crisscross, with letters being shared between words. That’s my baseline for a decent wordsearch. But Word Quest Pirates is scuttled by these simple requirements.
Like a Crossword Where the Words Don’t Cross
Too often, the puzzles only include vertical words. They stack up next to each other like they’re queuing for the loo. Another puzzle will only have diagonals, while another will only have horizontals. They don’t overlap: they spoon each other. It makes the puzzles wholly predictable, as you can find one word and use its orientation to guess where the others are. Ah, that one was diagonal? The rest must be too.
All of these peeves make Word Quest Pirates feel like it is lacking that human touch – a bit of authorship. If I were a cynical chap, I would ask questions about whether a certain two letters were involved in generating the puzzles. The tally of 210 wordsearches feels less and less like an achievement as the game progresses.
Achievement-hunters rejoice, however: you aren’t expected to complete 210 puzzles for your 1000G. You can snag the full GamerScore after roughly 50 puzzles, while the game is still offering 5×5 and 6×6 grids. Which might be a relief to some, as I can’t imagine completing all 210 puzzles. The monotony would send me down to Davy Jones’ locker.
Avoid the Temptation: It Ain’t Worth it
I can imagine people looking at the price and number of wordsearches and hovering over the ‘Buy’ button. But Word Quest Pirates isn’t worth even £1.69. It’s a Groundhog Day of the same puzzles, the same words, and the same layouts. If you manage to reach the end of all 210 puzzles then you’re a better pirate than I.
The only saving grace was that I got to make the ‘What’s a pirate’s favourite letter?” joke.
Important Links
Word Quest: Pirates Is One Of The Cheapest Games On Xbox – https://www.thexboxhub.com/word-quest-pirates-is-one-of-the-cheapest-games-on-xbox/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/word-quest-pirates/9PKGGJR797L2/0010?sandboxId=RETAIL
