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Wordlike Review: Scrabble meets Balatro in this game of strategy and anagrams

Roadtrip Games | $5/£5

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  • Balatro meets word jumbles
  • Neat if indistinct presentation
  • Lots of interesting modifiers and variables

Wordlike isn’t the first game to attempt to take Balatro’s uniquely streamlined twist on the roguelike and swap out its Poker mechanics for word jumbles. The similarly named Letterlike did something very similar not so long ago.

This is a much better take on the format, even if it still gets nowhere near the woozy majesty of Balatro itself.

Form words from jumbled letters

The idea is to form the best words possible from a Scrabble-like random selection of letters. Just like that aforementioned classic board game, each letter has its own value. Unlike Scrabble, the longer the word, the higher the score multiplier.

With an increasing points target to reach with each successive round, Wordlike forces you to focus on the intervals in between rounds. Here you can modify the value of your letters, increase word length multipliers, and add a whole bunch of Balatro-inspired modifiers to the core ruleset, shaping your deck according to your whims.

Pick your own path to success

Knick-Knacks take on the role of Baltro’s Jokers, doing things like adding a meaty multiplier to slang words (thus gleefully encouraging rudeness) or treating every letter as a vowel.

The latter is an example of a Knick-Knack that can form powerful synergies, or else lead to your decimation if the next random Boss battle rule shift decides to nullify the value of all vowels.

Purchase upgrades in between levels

Wordlike gets far closer to the playful, unpredictable spirit of Balatro than Letterlike. It helps that the presentation is crisper and clearer, even if it still lacks a distinct personality. The jumbled use of pool paraphernalia, stickers, and business contracts in its various bonus systems is indicative of a certain lack of focus to its design.

The game can feel rather tough from the off, with points targets that ramp up suddenly and a pronounced lack of resources to help you improve. This can then suddenly flip to feeling too easy when the power-up stars align, especially with the game’s lax approach to permitted words (including abbreviations).

There are plenty of special events

There’s no great sense of meta progression in between rounds either, other than working your way through the various trays (difficulty levels with unique modifiers), though a future Collections update may address this.

There’s ample scope for someone to pick up the casual roguelike ball dropped by Balatro and run with it in a new mobile-friendly direction. Wordlike perhaps isn’t the game to do that, but it is certainly one of the better attempts to date.