App of the Week - Wordament

Be warned, this week's post is about a highly-addictive game that might keep you busy while you are sunbathing on the beach this summer : Wordament !

Wordament is game where you compete against thousand of players from around the world to be the best at "finding words". It is like a mix between scrabble and Sudoku but a lot more hectic !

When you start a game you are presented a 4 by 4 board of letters each marked with a score. Your task is to form words by swiping your finger on the screen and connecting adjacent letters together. For each word you find, you add up the points from each individual letter. Each game only lasts for two minutes so you must stay focused and keep on searching for new words to have the best score. No time to relax! While you are playing you see in real time how many words are left for you to discover. Sometimes you also have challenges where you can earn extra points for finding words from a specific theme.

At the end of the game you are presented the list of all the words you could (or should!) have guessed along with the ranking of all gamers that played at the same time with the same board so you can assess your performance.

What I really love with this game is how immersive it is while being really simple. It is perfect for when you have some time to kill or when you want to take your mind off work. The massive multiplayer experience is also something that keeps me playing. Since you are competing against "the whole world" you are compelled to improve your score and go up in the rankings. You can also add people to your "frenemies" (friend + enemies) to keep track of their progress. There is also a set of achievements you can unlock and brag about on Xbox live !

If you want to challenge yourself a bit more or practice another language you can also change the game to French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch or Italian ! Another cool feature is "guest mode": if a friend borrows your phone to play the game, just enable "guest mode" to prevent him or her from running your stats ;-)

Here are a few of tips :

• After finding a word try to put in plural
• If it's a verb try to conjugate it
• Start with short words and then make them longer. For example "lead", "leads", "leader", "leading" etc.
• Don't forget that you can do shapes like an "X"
• Don't walk, talk, think, eat or do anything else while you're playing. Stay focused ;-)
• And the most important DO NOT try to beat me ! ;-)

The official website (source for the images)- Download from the Marketplace (did I mention it was free?) -

For those who already have Windows 8 a version is also available on the Marketplace. If you don't have Windows 8 yet, go get the free preview on your school's Bizspark Premium portal (formerly MSDN-AA) !

To conclude I would like to wish all students a GREAT GREAT SUMMER! You all deserve some holidays!

Don't forget that you can attend some really cool Windows 8 training this summer. See our blog post about it. You can really get a head start for next YMITS competition as well as being among the first to publish an application in the Windows 8 marketplace! If you have any questions let us know.

Pierre Grydbeck
Lead Student Partner Lausanne

The App of the Week blog category is an initiative of your local Microsoft Student Partners in Switzerland. Feel free to contact us, send us your proposals for an App of the Week or drop some lines below if you want to share ideas, feedback or just want to comment.