Download/HomepageAlphatris is a tetris style game where you form words instead of lines.
You can form 2, 3, 4, or 5 letter words. When you reach level 3 you can no longer form 2
letter words and when you reach level 6 you can no longer form 3 letter words. The word
dictionary includes over 13,500 words including slang and abbreviations. You can play the
game in English, Spanish, Italian, or French. The letters (mostly one letter at a time but
from time to time there is double letters) drop from the top into a board that is 7
letters wide and the game is over when the center row reaches the top preventing any more
letters from being able to fall. It keeps track of high scores and if you get the top
score on your computer it asks you if you want to post it to the top 100 scores web page.
The author included some twists to make this game exciting and enjoyable. First the
letters that fall are in different colored blocks. If you form a word with all blocks all
of the same color you score 10 times more then you would if you formed a word with
different colored blocks. Next the letters J, Q, V, X, and Z are bonus letters. If you
form a word using these letters you get double points and although these letters are in
silver blocks they are considered neutral so you can get double points for making a word
all the same color. There is also a random 5 letter word given and spelling that word
gives you a bonus of 150,000 if all the blocks are the same color or 75,000 if they
aren't. There are also power zaps that fall from time to time which will erase all
occurrences of the letter of the particular color of the letter it lands on (example if it
lands on a red A it will remove all red A's from the playing board). Finally there is the
option to click on zap to remove the letter that is falling. You start out with 3 free
zaps and earn 1 each time you reach a new level. If you use zap and you don't have any
free zaps then it is -500 for each letter you zap.
All in all this a pretty fun and addicting game. It can also help build spelling skills in
children so you can consider it educational. The graphics are great and can be changed.
The interface is easy to use and you can both the mouse and keyboard to play. The only
aggravation I had with this game was it not recognizing some words as words while
recognizing some "words" that I didn't know were words but this didn't happen to
often though. There are several options I didn't list but you can take advantage of the 30
day free trial to find out what they are. I really didn't see any difference between the
shareware and registered version.
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