For those who are longing for more Windows Phone word games, we've got a dandy for you. Word Mints is a "find a word" type game that is integrated with your Facebook account. Word Mints is a tournament oriented game where you race the clock and play against other players to see who can create the most words from a six random letters. There is a lot to Word Mints including daily contests, achievements, and your own Facebook styled wall.
The main pages for Word Mint cover the gaming menu, your profile and a social page that covers other player's activities. From the menu page you have the options to play the game, view the daily contest leaderboard, enter a practice round, access a help section, mute the sound and view yesterday's contest winners.
With Word Mints you will need to connect to your Facebook account to create a profile and to have full access to the game. This option will appear on your profile page when you first launch the game. Once linked to your Facebook account your profile will be created that will display your current level, high score and other gaming stats. It will also display your achievements.
Back to the main menu for a second...there is a help section but it's probably the weakest part of the game. It will walk you through the basics of game play and connecting to your Facebook account but beyond that it offers little information on other aspects of the game. Like what are the coins you earn after each round used for? It takes some digging (the information is in the "why connect?" screen) but the coins are used to unlock additional gaming content that is under development. Hopefully, the help section will be updated to cover more of Word Mints than game play instructions.
The game itself is fairly straight forward. You have six letters that appear at the bottom of the screen and you have 2.5 minutes to identify all the words those six letters can create. Simply tap on the letter to move it to the "word creation" field. If you select the wrong letter, just tap it in the "word creation" field and it returns to the pack. You also have a "clear" button that will wipe the slate clean. Once the word is built you can tap the "Enter" button to add it to your list. The larger the words, the more points you earn and if you submit a word twice, you get an error message. If you get stuck, there is a "twirl" button that will scramble up the letters.
You are competing against other players who are trying to solve the same word puzzle to see who can score the most points. At the end of the round, all the possible words are revealed and in a few minutes your score is tallied and ranked amongst the other players. A summary screen will appear showing where your score ranks and an earning page that will detail your score, experience points and coins earned. In a few minutes after the summary screen appears, another round is started and you are presented with another six letters.
You also have a practice mode that is accessible from the menu page when you don't want to compete against others. The practice mode has three options. A normal game where you are competing against the clock over multiple rounds, as you would in the tournament. A single round where you compete against the clock for one round. A puzzle round where the clock isn't running to allow you to find all the possible words.
Asides from the lacking help section, Word Mints also lacks the ability to log out of your Facebook account. Which would be nice if someone else would like to pass the time with the game and use their own Facebook account. Another nit is that you can't stay on the score summary screen or screen that shows you all the correct words. It would be nice to review the words at your own pace.
All in all, Word Mints is a nice word game for your Windows Phone. The word puzzles are challenging enough to keep you interested and if that wasn't enough there are five versions of Word Mints available. There is a Halloween, Butterfly, Farm and Holiday edition that basically gives the game a themed wallpaper.
All are free, ad supported apps for your Windows Phone and you can find the whole Word Mints editions here at the Windows Phone Marketplace. You can find tags for each individual version below (just hover over each for the description).
