Believe it or not, Google Play hands out awards called, unsurprisingly, The Google Play Awards and they recently announced their winners. The Standout Indie Game of 2016 is called Alphabear by a gaming company called Spry Fox. Check out the trailer and read on.
Alphabear is a word puzzle game. As you create words of at least 2 letters on the board, the adjacent pieces will unlock more letters to work with. These words will also turn into bears that will grow as you fill up more and more connecting spaces on the board. When the board is completely turned over, the game ends. The different types and sizes of the bears on the board will add up more points. The letter tiles also will have different life spans, changing colors till they have one more chance to be used when red until turned into a rock. The levels will vary in point objectives before being able to reach the blue and gold eggs to unlock or level up the bears you own. They are your secret weapon with their extended abilities from adding time on timed challenges to increasing the amount of certain letters to multiplying the final score. Watch our gameplay.
https://youtu.be/mC7z-WlX8CU
Alphabear is created in chapters. There are currently eleven chapters available to unlock. However, every chapter gains new levels with different days of the week. Every day reaps a new level and it gives us more chances to go back to play. The more chapters unlock means more levels available the next day to play. There are treasure events and boss levels to unlock the next chapter.
Much like the popular Facebook games system, you will run out of honey and coins to play (and unlock) levels. At this time, you can either wait for it to accumulate over time or pay to acquire more. It is a choice whether the player wants to spend money on the game. If not, there are still certain amounts of ads to watch to gain more honey or coins to trade in for more honey. The system works well for those who want to enjoy a free and fun game.
Alphabear is a simple, adorable and solid game. It is enjoyable and creative, similar to playing a game of scrabble but with a little extra end game to unlock different bears and level them up to your advantage. It is worth the wait for the honey to accumulate during the day to play a few levels and see what creative bear designs they have up the creator’s sleeves. The fun little sayings at the end of the levels using the words you created are puny and funny with a play on pop culture as a little bonus.