There are quite a few word puzzle games on mobile nowadays, and they all seem to follow the same trend of standard word search, crosswords, and what have you. However, this is not the case for Knotwords, and it is all the better because of it.
Knotwords does a great job by cleverly disguising itself as a simple-looking crossword game. However, look closer, and you will see that the usual hints don’t exist. Instead, your only indication of what the word will be are the Sudoku-like letters on the board. But it can’t be as simple as that.
What makes Knotwords a fiendishly difficult and captivating game is the fact that you don’t simply get the letters that make up a full row or column. Rather, you get what can only be described as Tetris-style selection of letters. These can be a selection of three that snake around the corner or a T block.
The result is you will sometimes get two or three different selections of letters for one line, with every single pool also affecting multiple lines. This elevates Knotwords above the standard word puzzles, making it quite hard to start with, but you will soon get the hang of it. That’s not to say it gets easy by any stretch of the imagination. Every game will challenge you in its own way.
There are multiple modes to play around in. But the main one is probably the Puzzlebook, a selection of puzzles that rotate each month. Throughout the month, there are thirty to tackle, each with a special theme. If you need help, you also get three hints a month, which replenishes when you complete a puzzle should you need them, and it is one of the better hint systems I have seen in puzzle games. You choose a line or column, and you get the definition of the word as opposed to a few random letters, so you still have the challenge of determining what the word should be.
For some extra fun, you can check out the daily puzzle section instead. These are broken down into the Daily Mini and the Daily Classic and, as I am sure you have worked out, come out once per day. You can consider this the easy, fun part of the app, as you are offered unlimited hints here. The only penalty, such as it is, is that you have three minutes added to your completion time. It is a lovely way to train for the more challenging puzzle book.
Whilst you can definitely enjoy this for free and be challenged each day, you can also upgrade to Knotwords Pro to access plenty more conundrums, which will cost you either £4.49 a year subscription or a one-off fee of £11.99 for lifetime access, which sounds like the better option if you can spare it at all once.
What this nabs you is double the amount of puzzles in the monthly puzzle books, at a higher difficulty to boot, alongside double the hints that you will most likely require. You also get access to a whole new daily puzzle, the Daily Twist. Again, this is effectively just another highly difficult problem to solve. On top of all the new stuff, you also will have access to the Daily Puzzle archives, giving you thousands of games to go back through.
It is fair to say that this is one of the most worthwhile upgrades in mobile gaming. You’ll also get some new colour themes besides the standard white, and you can see in-depth statistics for your past performances. These are obviously not the highlights from the upgrade but are still awesome bonuses nonetheless.
