#asynchronous play

[geekandsundry]

https://geekandsundry.com/play-rpgs-from-your-phone-at-your-own-pace-with-rolegate/

One of the hardest things about roleplaying games can be scheduling a time for everyone to play or finding a group that wants to play the particular style or system of game you’re most interested in. RoleGate is a relatively new play-by-chat platform designed to give players a space to play a...

[ipadarcanum-blog]

Play Hard with... Words with Friends HD

You work hard, and hopefully you get to play hard too. Each post in the "Play Hard with..." series will focus on at least one way that you can do the latter.

Words with Friends HD is the premium version of the game that puts a familiar turn-based board game on your iPad. Yes, for those that follow pop-culture, this is the same game that Alec Baldwin found so addictive that he allegedly got belligerent with an American Airlines crew and kicked off the plane rather than stop playing.

The "killer-feature" that Words with Friends brings to the table is its support for something called "asynchronous play". What this essentially means that after you take your turn, your opponent will be notified that it is their turn and the game will wait on them to make their move. This could happen instantly if they are available to play, or it could be that they don't get to it for a day or two... the game won't mind. While this does mean you may not have the immediacy that you get with a table-top board game, it does empower you to make a move during a break in your busy day and then close the app and go about your busy day.

Now your first thought after reading that may be, that sounds boring if I make a move and I'm done until someone else makes theres. Words with Friends avoids this potential tedium by allowing you to have multiple simultaneous games in progress at once. After you have 5-6 games running at once, you'll find that most times when you open the app at least 1 or 2 of those games will be waiting for you to make a move. The ability to quickly generate multiple games is helped by the ability to hook your Words with Friends player list into Facebook, so you can see who of your Facebook friends are playing the game. Doing this will also bring in their Facebook profile picture, which adds a nice personal touch when you are navigating among games. If you don't use Facebook or want to play with your friends, you can also seek out opponents at random for a quick challenge.

Another change from the traditional Scrabble game that it is obviously inspired from, is what I feel is a better designed board. Whiles the differences initially may seem subtle, the orientation of Letter and Word bonus tiles enable you to get multiple bonuses much easier than you do on the classic board. This makes for more exciting gameplay and introduces a lot more strategic positioning of letters as you maneuver to make sure that if you can't get a big bonus title for your word, neither hopefully will your opponent.

As fun as it is, there are some areas where Zynga could really stand to improve the experience. While you can see the results of your last completed games, there is no tracking of your overall record. This means unless you personally track it separately, there is no way for you to see what your overall winning percentage is, or how you are faring against a specific rival. Similarly, in an effort to keep you within their own Zynga ecosystem, it doesn't provide support for Game Center, which is really unfortunate because through it Apple has provided an easy way for app developers to incorporate these social features into their games.

Words with Friends HD [$.99] / Words with Friends HD Free (Ads) [Free]