I am completely addicted to Tile Takedown

Note: It appears this app has disappeared from the Market, at least temporarily. Commenter Matt points us to Wixel, which I just downloaded and played. I think it’s actually quite better. <

For a while there it seemed as though everyone was addicted to Angry Birds. Come to think of it, it still seems as though everyone is addicted. Me? I’ve never played it. I let myself become addicted by other types of games. One of my favorite past times is Boggle, so when I saw the availability of Tile Takedown, I knew I’d be in for it. After downloading last week I’ve already logged almost eight hours, which is significant, since each game lasts only three minutes.

If you’ve ever played Boggle before, you know the idea behind the game. You’re presented with a 4×4 grid filled with letters. You then take those letters and chain them together to form new words. You can’t skip over tiles, and you can’t use tiles twice. But other than that you can go up, down, diagonal, backwards and forwards.

The more words you create, the more points you get. Also, bigger words are worth more — as the Beastie Boys reminded us, you get 11 points off the word quagmire (though in Tile Takedown it’s 130 points).

Playing Boggle on a touchscreen just feels right. I tried playing it with the trackball on my BlackBerry and it just didn’t work. I spent all this time clicking down a letter and then moving to find a word. On my Nexus I just have to touch the letter and drag. Every once in a while I’ll accidentally drag across the wrong letter, but it’s not like you’re penalized for picking false words. Speaking of false words, they’re my No. 1 complaint about the game. In fact, they’re my only complaint. You’ll often see puzzles that have 130 possible words, but I’d be surprised if even half of them were standard English words.

One feature I’d absolutely love in an updated version is the ability to easily remove words from the dictionary. You can do this if you know the word, but that’s a pain. After the game is over and all the possibilities are listed, I want to click and eliminate the nonsense. That would make me feel a lot better about the game.

You can also play online with other players. There aren’t a ton of players on at all times, but there are a decent number. They are much better than me is all I can say.

The game is available for free in the Market. There is also a $2.99 premium version, which appears geared towards multiplayer.

About the Author

Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.