A Good Game That Could Be Tweaked – Word Sleuth Review

This is obviously similar to Word Freak in that they both use "Master Mind" type logic to discover a five-letter word. Word Freak, however, is obsessed with its own online rankings that stress quantity of play over efficiency of logic. Word Sleuth is an improvement in that it provides a list of letters for the player to designate as definite, definitely not, or maybe. But I would recommend a couple of changes. First, there should be a confirmation dialog when pressing "New" for a new game. That button is right among others and can easily be pressed by accident (and was, often, by me). We should be allowed to confirm or cancel in case we press it, or better yet, move that button as well as the "I Give" button to make them harder to hit by accident. Less important but similarly, the 'i' information button is so close to the 'A' and 'N' buttons that I kept hitting it by accident but that had no ill effects besides drawing an oath from me. I was surprised to find that while the game naturally tells us how many correct letters are in our guess, it does not indicate how many are in the correct position -- that is a staple in most "Master Mind" type games. If the developer believes this simply makes the game harder -- which it certainly does -- I suggest he make indication of correct position an option that the player can choose to employ or not. Similarly, perhaps there could be an option for an easier game by showing one letter of the word (either in position or not) at the beginning, but I recognize this may be going too far.
Review by dancelikeithurts on Word Sleuth.