Indie Games Mag Issue 9

Issue 9 of Indie Games Mag (the one with my BeeAppi article) is on sale now!

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BeeAppi’s CyberWord

New iPhone dev studio Bee Appi officially launches their first creation today. CyberWord is a candy-colored Bejeweled-meets-Boggle, built for whiling away time on the train or in the waiting room, but with an addictive blend of  match-3 mechanics and wordplay.

“Most word games simply ask the player to look at the screen,” developer Karen Jirak says, “but CyberWord adds a more interactive dimension by asking players to touch letters, swipe words, and shake the phone.”  CyberWord offers different playmodes, each with a slightly different twist on the swap and swipe mechanic. Challenge mode asks players to create 12 words before time runs out, with increasingly difficult levels. (Try the Easy setting for a particularly niece-friendly game, Jirak used her first-grade niece as a beta tester for the simpler vocab and easier goals.) Infinite mode adds a bomb, a familiar mechanic from match-3, and Puzzle is an untimed mode, requiring players to use up all the letters on the screen without replacement letters. Although you’ll spend most of the game rearranging the bright letter tiles, CyberWord also has adorable anime-eyed creatures cheering your successes and decorating the margins, for a sweet bit of character without falling into the pink trap.

Future updates include tying CyberWord in with Facebook Connect to share scores for a competitive wordsearch element. Don’t worry if you’ve been annoyed by the status-update barrage from friends playing FarmVille or recruiting mobsters, Jirak promises players can choose how frequently to share their scores on Facebook, and sharing on Facebook isn’t a requirement for progressing in CyberWord.

The BeeAppi team is downloading and playing a wide variety of iPhone games as they consider their next project, but we can expect this to be the first of many adorable BeeAppi games.

For more on Karen, BeeAppi and CyberWord, check out my full story in the next issue of Indie Game Mag.

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