The Top 10 Word Games for Android
Curated list of best word games app from the play store.
Word games are fun, can help you expand your vocabulary and language mastery, and sometimes also help with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Although crossword puzzles remain the most popular and easily accessible type of word games, modern technology has expanded their scope. Today you can find countless such games for your smartphone. Pay a visit to your phone's software store, and you'll find dozens fighting for your attention, hoping you'll choose and install them over the alternatives.
Admittedly, many of them are mediocre or straight-out cash-grabs. Making a crossword-equivalent is relatively easy compared to other types of games. Many so-called "developers" try to earn a quick buck by flooding the app stores with such sub-standard efforts.
Among them, though, you'll find the occasional diamond. Well-thought-out games that may also present beautiful graphics and animations, accompanied by an engaging soundtrack. Those are nice extras, but the best word games are those who grab your attention and don't let you go until you play one extra round, try to reach another level, well into the morning. Those that you quit only when you realize your neck has petrified after hours hunched over your smartphone's screen.
Well, bad news for your neck: we found the best of them for Android.
We Had To "Research"
There are many word games available for your smartphone. Among them, as expected, you'll find variations of the classics: crossword puzzles, Scrabble, Hangman, Jumble, Wordle etc. Some, though, take advantage of our devices' interactivity to try something new, original, and exciting.
For our list, we tried to locate some of the best word games available for Android, no matter their type. We didn't prioritize one kind of game over another. We set two goals for their selection: first, they should be among the most exciting and engaging word games available on the platform. Secondly, there should also be some variation. We tried to avoid cramming our list with similar games and to offer as many different takes as possible on what constitutes "a word game."
This also means we had to skip many popular titles purely because they were too similar to others already on our list. We also tried to avoid including those closer to what you'd call "a demo." Those presented as free, which end up only being a teaser for "the full experience." To be crystal-clear, we didn't avoid commercial games nor ad-supported freemium options. But we did try to skip over the most notorious offenders, the ones that were theoretically free when they weren't.
We are pretty sure you'll appreciate our choices. We're also sorry in advance if they end up eating a significant chunk of your free time.
As a final note, this is not a numbered list, and there's no "best" and "worst" game among our choices. They're all equally good and presented in the order we last played them. You know, "while researching this article." So, after two weeks of this "research" and some hours of writing, here are the best word games you can play today on Android.
Escape Room: Mystery Word
Escape Rooms were all the rage some time ago, bringing classic adventure game "gameplay" into the real world. Just like in the classic Zork text adventures for 8-bit computers, contestants had to solve a series of puzzles. Unlike those adventures of old, with their grand stories and many locales, here the goal was more straightforward and clear: you're locked in the room. You won't get out unless you solve the riddles within.
Soon Hollywood celebrities found themselves trapped for our entertainment. Escape Rooms even became a movie that, strangely, was much better than anyone initially expected.
Now, you can also try to escape from such a room, from the convenience of your couch. Admittedly, the stakes here are lower since you can always leave your smartphone aside and pay a visit to the fridge for a snack. Despite the relatively simple gameplay and the lack of impending doom, the fun factor is up there. You have to find the word that "unlocks" the current room, based on the hints you can see, to proceed to the next one.
Wordament
Microsoft destroyed many careers by including a version of Solitaire in all modern versions of Windows. Now, they've targeted Android and its even larger user base, which translates to almost half the planet's population!
You see, Wordament is just as addictive as Solitaire, being a different take on the classic "find-the-word" games.
In Wordament, you meet a board filled with letters, and you have to choose them in sequences that form actual words. The more complex the words, the higher the score.
As if that wasn't addictive enough, Microsoft turned the dial to eleven by adding a multiplayer element and Xbox Live support. Wordament doesn't take place solely on a board but connects multiple ones in succession to form an adventure. While traversing them, level by level, you also earn achievements while competing with others who also play the game.
Thank you, Microsoft, for ruining our life. Again.
4 Pics 1 Word
Let's begin by getting the bad news out of the way. After one of its newer updates, 4 Pics 1 Word multiplied the number of advertisements it presents between levels. That's a small price to pay for one of the most original and engaging word games available on Android, though.
The game's very title states what its gameplay is all about, although it might not be initially apparent. On your screen, you can see four different photos. One might show a fizzy beverage, the other a donut, the third one a candy bar, and the fourth one a jar of honey. Your task is you choose the correct letters that make up a word that connects all four images. In our example, it would probably be "sugar."
Like all good word games, it's simple to understand but unforgivingly addictive.
Word Search: Find Hidden Word Game
We'll be the first to admit that there are many games like Word Search: Find Hidden Word. Microsoft's Wordament is an evolution of the same formula. Sometimes, though, you want something simpler, more relaxing, closer to the retro experience of circling the words you've located in a board filled with seemingly random letters. You want something precisely like this game.
Word Search: Find Hidden Word Game presents you with such a board, taking up most of the screen. By "tracing" horizontally, vertically, or diagonally over the letters with your finger, you select words. There are over 5000 levels to go through, grouped in different categories - movies, sports, and so on. Each level comes with a clue, which can help you locate the words hidden in the letter soup.
Unlike many similar games, it supports multiple languages, although you can't choose freely between them from a menu. The game's language is bound to the one set as default in the operating system. Thus, if you're multilingual and you'd like to play Word Search: Find Hidden Word Game in a different language, you'll have to change that setting of the OS itself. This, in turn, will also change the default language of all the other apps you're using. At least, until you switch back to your primary language.
Words of Wonders: Crossword to Connect Vocabulary
A pure crossword puzzle game, Words of Wonders presents a classic crossword setup, presenting sequences of blank boxes intersecting horizontally and vertically. Each will house one of the letters you're called to select from a circular dial by "tracing" their sequence.
Words of Wonders' creators heavily promote their creation not as a fun game but also as an app that will help you improve your vocabulary, writing, and problem-solving skills. They talk about choosing the correct strategy for the occasion and how you might be forced to guess a solution when you can't find more words to connect.
We'd like a chat with them, for they're doing a disservice to their game by presenting it as the equivalent of a thesaurus - almost as fun as watching paint dry. Despite being advertised more as an educational tool than an actual game, it's basically a more modern take on the crosswords we all know and love.
AI Dungeon
Are you ready to see the future of gaming right before your eyes, to experience an interactive adventure like no other? No, we're not overstating things. Despite the admittedly banal looks of AI Dungeon, since it doesn't appear to be any different than your run-of-the-mill text adventure, the technology powering it is utterly impressive. Think Cyberdyne Systems from the Terminator franchise, or the very reason for Elon Musk's Neuralink technology: Artificial Intelligence. Thinking computers. Infinite possibilities.
Yes, AI Dungeon is powered by Artificial Intelligence, but don't fret; it doesn't plan to eliminate humankind and turn us into batteries, Matrix-style. Instead, it works behind the scenes in this dynamically-generated text adventure to respond to your commands and create a story, your story, from scratch. It all begins with you selecting the context of your experience-to-be from the available themes:
- Fantasy
- Mystery
- Apocalyptic
- Zombies
- Cyberpunk
- Custom
You're then presented with a short text that sets the stage and asked what you'd like to do next. You can think of anything, type whatever comes to mind, and AI Dungeon will try to respond the best way it can and take the story to the next step.
However, Artificial Intelligences aren't as smart as depicted in Hollywood flicks like Ex Machina, at least not yet. Sometimes AI Dungeon won't create a sensible response, and the story might take a left turn. Since this is an interactive game, not a system controlling nuclear warheads, we believe such faults actually improve the whole experience. It adds more to the fun factor if you treat all the misfires of the game's not-so-intelligent "Intelligence" not as faults but as random attempts at absurdist humor. Who said word games couldn't be creative?
Fill-The-Words - word search puzzle
Fill-The-Words is a more kid-friendly take at crossword puzzles. The game can keep both you and your young ones occupied with its combination of word-seeking action and colorful presentation.
Just like other crossword puzzle games on Android, your goal is to recognize and trace over all the letters on a board that make up a word sequence. Fill-The-Words differs in that when things get hard, cute little monsters will appear to lend a helping hand, hinting where you'll locate the hidden words.
With over 900 levels, support for English, French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese, and multiplayer elements that include achievements and ratings, Fill-The-Words can keep all word-lovers hooked over their smartphone's screen. Say goodbye to your free time before installing it on your device!
Words
Many word-lovers consider Words one of the classics of Android gaming, and it's easy to see why when you start playing. This admittedly hard-to-locate (because of its generic name that today brings up dozens of similar results) name is a simple, straightforward take on the classic crossword puzzle. There aren't any dancing, kid-friendly bears or colorful monsters popping-up to offer assistance. Nor does it offer multiple variations on its action or dozens of different gameplay modes.
What Words does, and better than most alternatives, is offer you straight, familiar, addictive crossword puzzle action. The game fills your device's screen with letters and tasks you with sliding your finger over the ones that create sequences that form words. The more words you find, the closer you'll get to your goal, which changes depending on which of the two provided game modes you chose. In Challenge mode, you have to locate words in a series of levels that get progressively more difficult. In Time Attack, you fight against the clock, trying to find as many words as you can before time runs out.
It's simple, it's fun, and soon Words will also be a resident of your smartphone. Forever.
Sight Words - PreK to 3rd Grade Sight Word Games
Although all games in our list are kid-friendly, Sight Words was created specifically for our mini-humans. It's one of those rare gems that manage to combine learning with puzzles and beautiful graphics, helping our little ones learn how to read while having fun.
Sight Words uses flashcards, sight word games, and Dolch lists to help kids enrich their vocabulary, pronunciation, and reading skills. Nobody's left out since its content is created for kids in pre-k, kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade. Plus, it includes multiple different gaming modes to keep the learning process engaging. Modes like Learn to Spell, where the kids can drag letter tiles in blank spaces to form words, Sticky Words, where they have to type on the spoken words they heard, or Sentence Maker, where they have to choose the correct word to complete a sentence.
Take heed, though: you might install it on your smartphone to keep the kiddo occupied and find yourself hooked, refusing to hand it over.
Words With Friends 2 – Free Multiplayer Word Games
Almost every list like ours includes a variation of Zynga's Words With Friends. There's a reason for that. How could one skip one of the most popular crossword puzzle games on the planet when compiling such a list?
We're realists, though, so although our list didn't present the previous in any specific sequence, we left this particular title for last. You probably already know about it, and if you don't, well, if you're interested in word-centric games, you will. Everybody eventually runs into Zynga's take on crossword puzzle action, which boosts the "action" part by slapping collaborative and competitive gameplay next to Word With Friends' solo mode.
If you want to fool around with letters and words but are not in a mood for classic crosswords, you can instead go for its Word Wheel and do anagrams in solo mode with time as your sole enemy. You can challenge yourself with daily goals or expand your vocabulary by tapping into the game's continually expanding Dictionary, which includes over 50.000 words "inspired by the players and pop culture."
Unfortunately, this being a Zynga game, and quite a popular one, also means it's riddled with annoying ads. The gameplay is engaging, and there's enough content to last for months. However, it also demands patience and steel nerves to enjoy it since the action is frequently interrupted by annoying 30-second ads, many of which are unskippable.
Outro
There are countless word games available for the Android platform, but we believe those on our list are some of the best you can find. We tried to include something for everyone, for word games can be many things, and "talk" to strategists, action addicts, adults, and kids. Do tell us in our comments section below which one(s) you ended up liking more. Feel free to suggest others you think we missed that we should check out. We'll try to include them in our next journey into the magical world of word games for our pocketable phone-enabled slabs of entertainment.