To be honest, as an old player who has been playing on mobile phones since the Symbian era, I have always had a special affection for word games. At that time, there was a game called "Spelling Master" on the Nokia N-Gage. It had a small screen and a small vocabulary, but it was fun to play. Later, with the rise of Android, Wordscapes became popular, and everyone filled in the word, and then the current "Wordscape" was created. Not to brag, but I played it seriously for about two weeks and would like to share my experience.
Let's talk about apples-to-apples comparison first. Wordscapes is the benchmark in this field, with exquisite graphics, soothing background music, levels with landscapes, and a literary and artistic approach. But to be honest, its lexicon is sometimes too American-style. Even I, who has taken the IELTS exam, have to look up some words in a dictionary. Moreover, the level design is too slow. I have to find all the words every time before I can move on to the next level. There is no difficulty gradient in between. "Word Filling for All" has made adjustments in this regard. It divides words into two modes: letter connection and crossword. The early levels are simple and direct, and can be passed in more than ten seconds. Later, double letters and repeated letter combinations are gradually added, and the difficulty curve is more reasonable. It does not have the setting of Wordscapes that forces you to find all the words at once, but allows you to skip or use prompts, which is very friendly to fragmented time.
Let's talk about the advantages. What impresses me most is its rich vocabulary and localization. I checked that the developer is Nanjing Moye Network, but the words included in the game are very authentic. It not only retains the commonly used daily vocabulary in the United Kingdom and the United States, but also adds many core words for Level 4 and Level 6, and even some academic vocabulary. In this way, players can indeed accumulate vocabulary while having fun. The game interface is very refreshing, there are no fancy animations, the loading speed is fast, and it can run smoothly even on low-end machines. The key is that it's free with no in-app purchases, and it only relies on advertising for monetization, and the frequency of advertising is well controlled. This is a refreshing change in the current mobile game market where recharge is common.
There are no shortcomings either. First of all, the social functions are basically zero. You can't play against friends or share results, which makes you less motivated. Secondly, there is insufficient feedback on word pronunciation. For players who want to practice listening, it would be better if they could click on the word to read it aloud automatically. Also, although the vocabulary library is large, the repetition rate is slightly high. After playing around 200 levels, you will encounter some word combinations that have appeared before, and the novelty will decrease. In addition, the game helps native Chinese speakers more in written vocabulary and less in spoken expressions, such as slang and abbreviations.
Generally speaking, the positioning of "Chinese Word Filling" is very accurate: it is a lightweight puzzle game that can be played for three to five minutes while commuting, queuing, or waiting for food. Compared with Wordscapes, it focuses more on the core purpose of "memorizing words" rather than creating artistic conception. For players who really want to improve their English vocabulary but don't like being kidnapped by social networking and achievement systems, this game is the best choice. 😊Finally, it's really rare to see such a pure stand-alone mobile game now. I hope developers can maintain this original intention and don't rush to add a bunch of fancy charging items.