HardBack

This app taught me how to play the game. Very fun and very clean yet very rich visually. Make sure you put your log in info correctly at first as there is no way to change it in the app. I think this is a fine representation of the game. I own the game but for one reason or the other haven’t been able to get it to the table because my wife and daughter haven’t wanted to have to go through a rule book with me to learn a new game. Now I can just get it out and teach them. Good Job!

This is another take on their earlier game, Paperback. It adds several interesting complications and improvements. There is a new suit mechanic, where you want to collect cards that compound their scores when played together. Each suit also focuses on certain types of gameplay advantages, so there is more variation from game to game that depends on which suits you focused on collecting. There is a new wildcard mechanic, where any card can be used as wild by flipping it over. This greatly increases the number of words that can be made from any hand. Because wild cards do not score at all, you have an interesting puzzle to solve in deciding which cards to score and which cards to use as wild. It also has a new “push your luck” mechanism where you can draw extra cards, which you must play. If you can play the new cards, you can get a great score, but if you draw an unfortunate combination of letters you might get stuck. On the downside, it feels like there is some more luck to it. I have had games where I easily tripled the score of the robots on medium, and I have had other games where I couldn’t get started. Overall, I loved Paperback, and Hardback takes the same idea to another level.

I like it a lot more than Paperback. While Paperback is a fun and relaxing game, I felt myself getting bored halfway through. Hardback is full of interesting decisions. The categories add a whole new level and create chaining bonuses like in Star Realms. Buying and using ink is a key feature of Hardback since it’s the only way to draw cards, and adds a press your luck element to the game. The greatest part is that you can flip over cards to make them wild. This allows freedom to create tons of words while still considering the chaining abilities of the cards. There are also options to adjust the victory point goal for longer or shorter games.

I would recommend this game, and this app, to players who are familiar with other "deck-building" strategy games, specifically ones such as Star Realms and Ascension. I think fans of deck-builders will like this even if they don't like other word games. I suspect, though I don't know, that word game players may find this game a little too heavy on the game and too light on the words. But it's worth a try, because it's a great game and a great app. Solid graphics, music, gameplay. Highly recommended!

I love the physical game, and now I can play on my iPad! Easy to play with a good UI. Update: the latest release fixed the bug. Thanks for the quick response! ——- I’ve only played against the hard AI 1 bug and one request. Bug: If I had two Romance cards with the doubling effect it wouldn’t let me use it with both cards. It would warn me that I hadn’t used one of them when I tried to move on, but if I tap on the unused card, I couldn’t select either of the adjacent cards. This happened twice. Both times the card it wouldn’t let me use was a card with ink. No errors showed in the log. I can give more info if needed. It’s a repeatable error. Request: when playing against the AI, it would be nice to have a back button. I’d like to be able to re-do my word even after hitting submit.