Fruit Machine Chat

I've not seen this game mentioned too many times on here but it seems to have been around for donkeys years (albeit on obscure machines).

I like the game format - since it almost completely revolves around making words from a rack of letters with just a few "bonus" tiles to help out - and for that reason I always have a quick quid on it.

Unfortunately, I find the difficulty level of the game is set so high that it seems impossible to win any sizeable amount of cash.
The best I've done is to scrape past the 1st level (the aptly named "bog of despair") - so I really wonder what the point of the huge map with loads of cash prizes on each area is.

I'm interested to know if anybody has had any success on this or knows of any specific strategies (eg. are fast 3 letter words better than a well thought out 8 letter word?)

i played this one a fair bit when it was on paragons alongside space quest which was excellent imo. haven't seen it for ages except at ATEI. (find the open interface too frustrating so have given up on them.)

i've been on level five but only occasionally won anything more than a few quid. when it decides to put you in against the red dragon you are moribund.
but it is a neat trick that the scoreboard has the five worst players ever and silly nicknames.

there is not much elegance in the wordplay on it, like so many other word games it is really all about numbers and time: work out how many points you are going to need to kill the beeste and hack out a string of letters which does the job.

Not that I've seen this game, but is it a bit like that 'Bookworm Adventures' word game that I've 'obtained', whereby you have to build words to defeat the enemies and progress? Fun for half hour or so, but that was about it. Also, the fact that there is no oppurtunity for monetary gain is not a help!

just had a google of the bookworm adventures game Matt, it looks very similar in gameplay to DD but 100 times more stylish in game design.
i like the (completely unnecessary) subdivision of baddie powers.
the ridiculousness of the premise really appeals to me: that a little worm with specs can defeat a terrible hawk by spelling out some words

i want one.

I find this game pretty annoying, because of spoilers like the ******* red dragon.

Best strategy might be to hack words out as quickly as possible - thinking time is used by the monsters to launch their attacks.

It's on Open cabinets btw.

The game is at least 3 years old now and i dont think it did all that well as it was not on the machines i go on around Nottm for too long.
It reminded me of those type attack games on the pc.

bookworm adventures is an excellent, excellent game. silly but excellent.

the storytelling is well-researched with frivolity and humour. the (subtly advertised) easter eggs are very clever too and rewarding for the player who thinks he is beating the game when he is really only making it a bit quicker. (if you spell the enemy's name he says "eek!")
also, baddies are from solid literary sources like arabian nights and odyssey/iliad: rewarding for us would-be intellectuals and mugs might be excited by slaying seven heads of a hydra and killing scylla wondering if whoever made the game is going to bring on charybdis.
and, heaven forfend, it is actually a word game about words.
thanks for introducing me MattV. it beats crap like facebook scrabulous by a mile.

i realise that SWP doesn't have a production budget which could justify a game as good as BWA and that a game which takes four hours to do is unrealistic on the terminals. however, BWA is undeniably good. for the unneccessary baubles and quirky bonus stuff it has mass appeal. while the adventure mode is pretty easy, the arena (timed) section is brutal and would port pretty seamlessly.

on the whole, i think we'd all agree that the SWP folk do a decent job overall with creaky hardware but, imo, SWP developers could learn a thing or two from having some design features which rewards the casual player. too many games have such a boring interface.

if i was in charge of a budget, i wouldn't waste it on some forgettable new TV show in a lazy SWP clone to ape tired goners. i do realise that wordnerds make up a small percentage of the target demographic (and that certain fruitchat folk will be making some snide comments) but would hope that lurking industry people have hearing ears as well as nosey eyes. renewing the bookworm licence would surely be cheaper than comissioning a good clone from scratch and there would be a ready-made game which is universal and popular.

Fortunately you are not in charge of SWP production budgets. The very fact that Word Up is now a 4 year old game and nothing has come close to competing with it, despite several poorly cloned attempts, would indicate that it has somewhat of a monopoly where word games are concerned.

Even Countdown (presumably set on your Sky+ planner) failed miserably. Twice.

Be happy with your Word Up. 1 word game is enough for any toy cupboard, as Mr. Alfred Butts will surely tell you.