Tomes and Quests: a Word RPG Reviews

It's kind of amazing how a simple toggle of a feature withing a game can make or break it. In this scrabble knock-off, you cannot disable the game from trying to give you a hint. I hate it. Drives me mad. I feel like I can't think of words while it blinks. I could get over the lame story, repetitive music, and loot-box like leveling up system. This is no true RPG. It is a lack-lustre word game with RPG themes. You could probably get an hour or two out of this and not be too upset. This is the kind of game that is good to grab if it's on sale only.

Tomes and Quest est le genre de jeu qui a le potentiel de se retrouver dans les écoles primaire pour développer le vocabulaire des enfant tout en s'amusant. La courbe d'apprentissage est bien adaptée, les visuels et les dialogues font penser aux Manga, et ça fait même penser à Jumanji! Tomes and Quest is the kind of game that has the potential to be found in primary schools to develop children's vocabulary while having fun. The learning curve is well adapted, the visuals and the dialogues are reminiscent of Manga, and it even makes one think of Jumanji!

If you like relaxing games in a fantastic univers and a creative Storyline, this is the game for you. You play this game of Scrabble with a touch of D&D's skills. This is the story of a group of kids who end up in a D&D game. Fight the monsters with you intellectual habilities to complete the Quests, play more to unlock new Territories to explore and see how the lovely the 3 main characters increase their power and progress in the adventure. The designs of the game/characters are super nice and mystical. I recommend this game if you love Adventures and CrossWords.

Pros: - I really like the concept of flavoring a Scrabble game and making it center around an RPG. It’s a unique touch to make the game stand apart from the millions of other generic words games out there. - I thought the art was nicely done. Anyone expecting a ton of different expressions or poses doesn’t understand the point of such a game – even in huge games like Hades, there are limited poses/looks per character as they go through dialogue. - Also, the designs of the enemies and the different armors were super cool-looking! - I loved the diversity of the characters. It’s nice to see RPG spaces becoming more inclusive! - The story was simple, but made for a more interesting time than just going through a wordplay game. - The fact that you can see how much “damage” your word will do to an enemy is an imperfect system (see below), but very useful most of the time. - The different mini-games to break up the larger word puzzles were challenging and a nice change from doing the same 9x9 grid over and over. - Really reminded me of every DnD campaign I’ve ever been a part of – you have a big challenge, but oops, you keep getting pulled into side quests! A cheeky little nod to how RPGs tend to run, which I enjoyed. Cons: - Having a hint pop up after what felt like 10 seconds was not just distracting, but actively annoying. It would be nice to have a longer delay, or a “click for hint” option. - Main grids REALLY should be 15x15, as in a standard Scrabble game. It’s too difficult to fit in long words, so most of your words end up being 5 characters or less. - Some way to access what each hero is strong/weak against while in a puzzle is desperately needed. Several times I quit a puzzle to go back to the Hero screen and remind myself how the elements work. (Other than Fire being strong against Ice, the rest didn’t click intuitively.) - The enemies’ element symbols cover up the last ~10% of their health bars. I kept thinking I’d destroyed an enemy, only to be wrong because I couldn’t see their projected remaining health. - The “bomb” mini-game seemed to accept me dragging and dropping a letter into pretty much ANY space, which meant I basically cheated my way through each of those sections. Overall, I think the game needs some touch-ups that would greatly ease/enhance player experience, but it’s not unenjoyable as-is. I could see myself firing it up for a few quick levels here and there, especially in pursuit of the different achievements!

A game with a fair amount of potential and fun in small doses, but enough gameplay and interface frustrations in its current form to forestall a positive recommendation from me. The distribution of letter tiles feels off - too many Qs, Zs, and Xs in the mix without enough of the common letters and the inability to draw duplicate letters really limits the words one can spell. The hints come way too early and there's no option to turn them off, throwing off the chill vibe I'm looking for in a word game - sometimes I want to think about my play for 30 seconds without something flashing at me. There's also no reward for using all the letters, the best dopamine hit in any letter-placing game. I'd really favor having more than six letters in hand and generally larger boards for more placement options. The interface has numerous problems - the snap function of letters to the board is too loose, so you can often end up not submitting all the letters in a word even though they appear to be on the board; the quit button is in the setting menu; the same circular arrow button icon is used multiple times in different contexts and it's never clear which it means, monsters' last bit of health is hidden behind their elemental symbol, so you can't actually see how much health they have left; and the equipping menu is a confounding mess. There's nowhere in game that the elemental interactions are specified except the occasional tip and none of the equipment stats have descriptions. It's fine to stick that in a help file, but I shouldn't have to go to the web for it. (I also don't want to have to figure out complicated RPG mechanics in a relaxing word placement game, but eventually I hit a point where I had to stop playing to figure it out, because I'd hit a difficulty wall.) I also really dislike that the max reward for the bridge-style puzzles in entirely RNG; on the longer words, you often have to reload dozens of times before it's possible to spell a six letter word. Despite all the grousing, I really like the core idea here and it's a perfect idea of a game to play for a few minutes at a time, but I think a little polish could really make it shine. Honestly, I'd settle for the ability to turn the dang hints off and fixed letter snapping.

It's decent if you have nothing else to play, but the further I get in the story the more seems to be missing. Things aren't explained as well and it honestly feels like someone's school project. With a little more time and polish it could be great, but not right now.

I came into this with pretty basic expectations, and even those were not met. The core gameplay (of making words on a scrabble-like board, to score points that modifies an 'attack' against an enemy' is all you really get with this game. The art is passable but generic, the story is uninspired, and the music is generic and repetitive. There's a lot that could be done with something like this, and they did the bare minimum. The boards are too small for decent play, and the general gameplay is extremely basic. You're typically playing 3-4 letter words in a very limited space. The dictionary is certainly not a scrabble level dictionary, with some odd words missing and being allowed. It might be worth a couple dollars, and I'd consider keeping it at that price, but not the current (slightly discounted) price.

After having expanded my play time on this game I have to say while it's an ok game... it doesn't really fit the presentation that the blurb promised. This is a basic scrabble game with graphics and not much else. It's functional in what it does but doesn't stand out. I'm not sorry I spent the money... it is a distraction but I really doubt I'll play it again when I finish. There doesn't appear to be that much of a draw beyond playing the basic scrabble. Maybe they'll upgrade it abit and I'll look forward to it but I'm not holding my breath. I guess that I have to state that the Thumbs Up is wrong... but I'm not sure how to rectify it. The game is shallow and just doesn't fulfil the promise of what might have been. Not even bargain bin material I'm afraid.

This game is overflowed with needless texts and forced RPG elements which just make the scrabble experience into a repetitive, boring and uninteresting struggle. As if its creator could not have decided what his actual intention had been. This mix of totally different game elements is awful. Its graphics are minimalized, the music is repetitive, I did not find explanation of what to do with the RPG elements or how to use them. At the end of the first 10 minutes l even did not understand why are there. Without them, the game could as well enjoyable. If you have ever played a normal online scrabble match you probably won't like this game.

Lack of options, and over all feeling of cheapness. I don't think much effort went into it. It may be affordable but I certainly don't recommend it. It's just not polished enough for a brand new game. Compared to an old game like Letter Quest, this is like playing a pre-made game where all they did was change the stock graphics and music with other stock graphics and music.