(Review for SNES version.)
It's time to bully a 1992 video game that no one cares about.
Wordtris isn't particularly popular, and as early as the main menu, it's not hard to see why. If ever a game could be described as "sickly," that game would be Wordtris on the SNES. I briefly touched on its aesthetic qualities in my 2018 review of its soundtrack (yes, really), and it's worth bringing it all up again because of how strongly its audiovisual design impacts the feel of the game—arguably much more than its actual gameplay.
Wordtris makes the strange choice of utilizing heavily compressed and posterized circus photographs, their strongly saturated colors clashing with the drab letter blocks and wooden playing field. It's just got this really unappealing visual style that the gameplay concept isn't even dependent on, so it almost feels like an insult to what the SNES is capable of. Even if the developers were really married to this whole circus theme they ended up going with, they could have at least utilized brighter and more colorful pixel art instead of this weird dirt-with-ketchup-on-it visual style they've got going on here.
The sensory assault doesn't stop with its looks, though—its soundtrack deserves some spotlight as well. Long story short, Paul Mogg composed some circus-y tunes for the game on a Macintosh program, and then audio engineer David Warhol ran it through a sound driver to convert the MIDI files for the SNES's 16-bit audio processing unit. I don't know whose fault it was—whether it was an issue with the composition or the conversion—but the end results? A weird, anxious, and repetitive score that underlines the dingy, skeevy feel of the final product.
And you know what? I think it... kinda works? It's got this uneasy, surrealist tinge to it—probably unintentional—but there's also something instantly nostalgic about it for me. It was something I felt on my first playthrough, despite never playing the game as a child. Though I sorta grew up with access to a SNES, it's not a vibe I get from most SNES games I come across. That said, I can definitely understand why most people don't vibe with it, regardless of the gameplay. It's pretty a grody game—but I think it's neat regardless.
I can boot up Wordtris if I need to burn a few minutes, and I actually enjoy myself. I really do like the gameplay, and I think there are a few design elements in there that are pretty smart. Letter blocks fall down a grid and collect at the middle instead of the bottom—this is so, at least initially, stacking blocks will push the whole stack down further instead of building upwards. Once you've stacked enough in one column that the letters are touching the bottom, that's when they'll start building to the top. It makes it easier to actually make words to clear the blocks, and allows players to intentionally push letters down to make words with otherwise unreachable blocks. It could have just been a Tetris grid with letter blocks, and it would have sucked a whole lot. Some thought really went into making this a solid gameplay concept, which is appreciated.
I have no closing paragraph, go home. End of review.
It's time to bully a 1992 video game that no one cares about.
Wordtris isn't particularly popular, and as early as the main menu, it's not hard to see why. If ever a game could be described as "sickly," that game would be Wordtris on the SNES. I briefly touched on its aesthetic qualities in my 2018 review of its soundtrack (yes, really), and it's worth bringing it all up again because of how strongly its audiovisual design impacts the feel of the game—arguably much more than its actual gameplay.
Wordtris makes the strange choice of utilizing heavily compressed and posterized circus photographs, their strongly saturated colors clashing with the drab letter blocks and wooden playing field. It's just got this really unappealing visual style that the gameplay concept isn't even dependent on, so it almost feels like an insult to what the SNES is capable of. Even if the developers were really married to this whole circus theme they ended up going with, they could have at least utilized brighter and more colorful pixel art instead of this weird dirt-with-ketchup-on-it visual style they've got going on here.
The sensory assault doesn't stop with its looks, though—its soundtrack deserves some spotlight as well. Long story short, Paul Mogg composed some circus-y tunes for the game on a Macintosh program, and then audio engineer David Warhol ran it through a sound driver to convert the MIDI files for the SNES's 16-bit audio processing unit. I don't know whose fault it was—whether it was an issue with the composition or the conversion—but the end results? A weird, anxious, and repetitive score that underlines the dingy, skeevy feel of the final product.
And you know what? I think it... kinda works? It's got this uneasy, surrealist tinge to it—probably unintentional—but there's also something instantly nostalgic about it for me. It was something I felt on my first playthrough, despite never playing the game as a child. Though I sorta grew up with access to a SNES, it's not a vibe I get from most SNES games I come across. That said, I can definitely understand why most people don't vibe with it, regardless of the gameplay. It's pretty a grody game—but I think it's neat regardless.
I can boot up Wordtris if I need to burn a few minutes, and I actually enjoy myself. I really do like the gameplay, and I think there are a few design elements in there that are pretty smart. Letter blocks fall down a grid and collect at the middle instead of the bottom—this is so, at least initially, stacking blocks will push the whole stack down further instead of building upwards. Once you've stacked enough in one column that the letters are touching the bottom, that's when they'll start building to the top. It makes it easier to actually make words to clear the blocks, and allows players to intentionally push letters down to make words with otherwise unreachable blocks. It could have just been a Tetris grid with letter blocks, and it would have sucked a whole lot. Some thought really went into making this a solid gameplay concept, which is appreciated.
I have no closing paragraph, go home. End of review.