Not to be confused with the similar nomenclature of “World of Lexica” which is a tablet based children’s RPG game from Schell Games. Lexica is a puzzle game that was a collaborative effort of Vexus Puzzle Design and Merge Games. Vexus Puzzle Design created the puzzles themselves while Merge helped publish and market the game. Lexica was gifted to me during the Steam Summer Sale, and it has become my go to break time game.
To preface this review, if you are not a fan of word/puzzle games this won’t be a good fit for you. There is no end goal, it’s just how many puzzles can you complete in the various “packs” with 13 Steam achievements unlocking based upon quantity and time taken for each puzzle.
I’m a fan of most puzzles, to give you an indication of how much I love word based puzzles I’ll let you know a secret. Will Shortz was one of the idols of my teenage years. Yes, the guy who developed his own degree at Indiana University called enigmatology and helped create the modern NY Times crossword was a favorite of my teenage heart. So you can guess that when I saw this puzzle gem I was intrigued by its format. This game is an interesting mixture of several different forms of word puzzles. Combining the grid system of Sudoku with the black and white tiling of crossword puzzles, and topping it all off with the recombining of words ala Scrabble, Lexica gives its players a unique puzzle experience. This mixture is what drew me in, and it is what kept me playing through the various puzzle packs.
Lexica has three levels of game packs: easy, medium, and hard. The packs total around 96 puzzles according to the Merge Games site, but I’ve only completed between 20-30 at the moment. The game begins by you selecting a difficulty level and then proceeding to go through the puzzle while a clock monitors your time. You may exit at any point, and you can even go to another puzzle with the option to return at any point available to you. The point is to slide all the letter tiles into their correct places in order to create a set of interlocking words. These words are set already so it’s up to you to merely find them. The varying difficulty levels are definitely good indicators of the puzzle difficulty, but I found that even a few of the easy ones afforded their own challenge.
It’s definitely a fun word puzzle game and one that I would recommend. However the simplicity of its design and content make me think that it is definitely a Steam Sale game at its core. Unless you’re absolutely certain you want a game of this type, it would be best to wait til it is marked down as there is very little replay value once you’ve solved a puzzle. This is definitely a game that much like a puzzle book you’ll do once and then never touch again so be wary with your money. That being said, I still thoroughly enjoyed it and I think that puzzle fans will too.
8/10
Jess Playin' 