Rootword

Language games generally aren't very interesting to me, but I had enough fun I'll play it again. I suspect this will be better with more than two players.

Interesting mechanics which lead to a different feel from many other word games. So far I've only played it as a two-player game, and it's decent but not great. I think it could be much better with more players.

After falling in love with Innovation, I'm riding comfortably on the Carl Chudyk bandwagon. This is an excellent word game that is very simple to play but very clever. We played three games the first night it arrived and are definitely hooked. SO far only played 2 player but I can see how it would be excellent with 4 or more.

This is pretty decent, but I'm biased because I'm good at it. Some other players were pretty frustrated.

Ordered from The Game Crafter

Note: If you like word games you should rate higher than me. My rating reflects a personal dislike of word games in general.

This games reminds me quite a bit of the fantastic Organic Soup. You make sets of things in front of you and you steal your opponent's things in front of him. It's not quite the same game, however. I very much like how this, unlike many other word games really encourages long words.

Excellent! You build partial words ("roots") in front of you; or steal other players' roots if you can add a letter of matching color; or, if you still have a root at the start of your next turn, then you may add letters to finish and score the word, without the need to match colors in this case. Finished words score 1 point per letter; unfinished words score -1 point per letter.

The colors are not just a gimmick; they make this a better game than the otherwise-similar game Bali. You might hold onto a color-matched letter in order to be able to steal back your root if it is stolen. When another player plays a 1- or 2-letter root, especially in a 2-player game, you must decide if you should steal it just to prevent them from easily making a finished mostly-non-color-matched word from letters in their hand.

This is a little slower but richer and more intellectual than something like Bananagrams.

This is better than the similar game Bali, in my opinion; the colors make your estimations of what might happen to a root in future turns more complex.

It seems like bad design to me that all cards of a given letter have the same left side, because this offers an advantage only if you memorize or note what that left-side color is for each letter!