KrissX

Countdown. It’s a curious show that shouldn’t work. It appeals to the oldies and the younger members of society and everyone always races to complete the conundrum before the players on screen. And then you feel smug when you do. When you play KrissX you’re taken on an journey through the world of anagrams by an owl called Wordsworth. It’s like the Countdown Conundrum on overdrive.

When you play the game you’re presented with a crossword-style grid made up of a few jumbled words. It’s up to you to un-jumble these words, with a few simple clicks. The faster you solve them, the more points you’ll score – collect the bonus tokens that solving a word can release and you’ll increase your score even further or activate a special move that solves some of the words for you. It’s that simple. Now go and play it. I’ll see you in a few hours.

What you’ll rapidly find is that this game is remarkably addictive. What starts off as quite an easy challenge slowly ramps up in difficulty as you play through the levels, throwing in longer words or solutions that require more than one swap to solve. Every few levels a different challenge will appear. You’ll be asked to make a word in a set number of swaps, or to arrange a grid to show three words across the rows.

While some of the words are obvious, others are a little trickier to solve so the clues the game offers do come in handy – although sometimes these can be as obscure as the word you’re trying to solve. I may, if pressed, admit to using an anagram program on a couple of the words as I played as I had literally no idea what the heck it was getting at with the clues it was giving me. So that’s the gameplay in a nutshell, it’s simple and addictive and before you know it you’ll have unlocked the achievement for reaching the fiftieth stage of the game and be wondering where the last few hours have gone.

There are 150 stages to the main game, each one offering a random set of words each time you play. So while words may be repeated throughout the game, no two games are the same. Graphically the game is very well presented for something which is, essentially, a bunch of letter tiles arranged in a crossword, while you’ll find Wordsworth the owl is a master of the withering look while you’re struggling to find a word. Depending how well you play the levels you’ll unlock badges as you make your way through the game, each rewarding you for a certain task – solving the puzzle quickly, reaching a certain level, collecting bonuses and the like.

There’s no multiplayer – but there are plenty of game-modes to go at – quest, timed and timefree. With each one offering you a random word experience each time, and a damned addictive one at that, you’ll find enough to keep you busy for ages.

And that’s before you realise that the game’s on Facebook as well…