Wurdy Review
It’s that time of year again, the time of year when you’re undoubtedly going to be getting together with friends or family and consuming untold amounts of alcohol. If you’re anything like us, here at GodisaGeek, then you’ll be attempting to coerce those various family members and friends into playing a few games. For some of you – those with the more gaming literate families – this will take the form of multiplayer games such as Injustice: Gods Among Us or Smash Brothers Brawl. However, for those of us not lucky enough to have grandparents who know what a controller is, never mind how to use it, we have to settle for party games; games with simple rules but which are no less fun (especially when drink is involved) and that’s exactly where the iPad, and games such as Wurdy, come in.
Wurdy, as you could probably deduce from the title, is a word game with a simple task; the player has to describe a word they’re given from a pretty huge selection, and they get points when the other person correctly guesses the word. For example, the word you get may be “Presents”, the phrase you could say to the other person, in order to help them guess it, could be “what’s left under the tree on Christmas morning”. Hopefully, if they’re not too drunk, they should be able to guess the word, you can press the big green button, and award yourself some points.
As you may have already guessed, there’s a certain amount of trust involved in Wurdy. You’re being trusted to give yourself points if the other person manages to guess the word based on your clues, so it’s easy just to keep giving yourself points even if they guessed wrong. This is where a little bit of personal judgement comes into play, and you’ll just have to make sure that you’re playing with people who can take the game a little bit seriously, otherwise the gameplay gets spoiled and it’s not the game’s fault at all.
You can add as many people as you want to the game too, simply by tapping on a ‘plus’ button once a round ends, so you don’t have to worry about people being left out, and you can keep going for as long as you want as long as you don’t keep getting the same words over and over again. As you can expect from a word game, there is a limited amount of words in the game’s vocabulary (more words, from different themes, can be bought using the in-app purchasing options) so once you’ve exhausted them, you may want to stop playing for a bit or pass the game over to someone who hasn’t played it yet.
One of the most original features of Wurdy, and the feature which makes it more than just a simple party game, is the fact that it records each round of every game. At the end of each round you’ll be given the option to review the video that was recorded, and then upload that video to Twitter, Facebook or YouTube should you wish. If you choose to upload the video to the social media websites, the video will also get added to Everplay, a built-in social media-esque service which collects everybody’s videos into a single place. It’s a great move that makes a game which could be fun to play from time to time an absolutely essential purchase for anyone throwing a party. Just imagine all those Facebook/Twitter videos of your drunken friends trying to explain words. It’s worth the price of admission for that alone!
VERDICT: If you’re going to be getting a few people around for some drinks over Christmas, and you’re looking for something to play, you couldn’t do much better than Wurdy. The gameplay is tried and tested, and people that haven’t played this type of game before won’t take long to learn the rules. The addition of recording the rounds and being able to upload them to all of the usual social media channels means that you can share the fun with people that weren’t able to make it to the occasion and is a stroke of genius from the developer.
Having a couple more categories on offer after buying the app in the first place would have been nice, but the selection that is available isn’t terrible. Just make sure you’re not playing with the same people over and over, or you may find the same words cropping up again and again.
VERY GOOD. An 8/10 is only awarded to a game we consider truly worthy of your hard-earned cash. This game is only held back by a smattering of minor or middling issues and comes highly recommended.
Review code provided by publisher.
Martin Baker
By day I play video games, test video games or just simply write about them. By night I fight crime on the streets of London as a masked vigilante known only to a select few ... damn SECRET identity. Could never get the hang of that.
I've been writing about video games for about 10 years now, and playing them for even longer, starting off with a Spectrum ZX passed down to me in about 1988. Yes, I used to play games that came on cassettes. Yes, they were AWESOME!
I've been writing for God is a Geek since October 2010 and loving every minute of it, aside from that I write for my own website and work as a video game tester for Testology. So, yeah, I'm pretty much living the life of a gamer, and I don't intend stopping anytime soon thank you very much.
Unless I run out of money, then we might have a problem.
