Latest Great iPhone Game: Letterpress

People are always looking for the next great iPhone game. It has to be low-commitment, super easy to quickly get in and out of, über addictive (yes! I used an umlaut on this site), and lots of fun.

Well, it's almost as if Letterpress was created to do just that. It's a word game that presents you with a board of letters with which you have to find and make words. There are many games like that, but Letterpress does a few things differently.

For one, the whole game is purely "social". That is to say, you can only play against another real person over Game Center. There is no "computer" you can play against. You can either invite a friend, or play against someone at random assigned to you by the game. You make a move, and then you get a notification when your opponent moves. (To all those with the 200MB data plan on AT&T, beware of all of these push notifications over cellular data.)

Secondly, the app adds strategy as a huge factor. It's not just about getting the best and biggest words — the location of these words is über important as well (that's twice with the umlauts now — but who's keeping score?). You see, when you make a word, all the tiles that make up that word become your color. Sort of like the popular board game Othello. The twist is that if you surround a particular tile with other tiles of your color, that tile becomes permanently your color and cannot be changed by your opponent (at least not until it is no longer surrounded by your color tiles.)

If this all sounds a but complicated, just play the darned game. You'll get the hang of it real fast.

The app is free to download, and a $0.99 in-app-purchase to unlock additional fears like word lists, themes, and the ability to play multiple games at once. The $0.99 is well worth it.

Finally, MacStories has a great interview with the creator of the game. He has also gone on record elsewhere for saying that a "rematch" button is coming. Yes. Double yes.

Letterpress is the game of the month, my friends.