Bookworm Adventures Vol. 2 v1.0.4.8465

Volume 2 is a very apt subtitle – not just for the quaint literary pun, but because this game serves as little more than a barebones follow-up to the original Bookworm Adventures. Outside of a few new features and some superficial tweaks, the game retains its simple premise – spell words, kill dudes.

Faced with 16 random scrabble tiles, you defeat enemies by turning gabled letters into cohesive words – the longer the better. By flexing your vocabulary muscles, snarky Bookworm Lex dispatches fairytale foes and nursery rhyme ne’er-do-wells in curt, terse hits, or in a magnificent bombardment of polysyllabic destruction. It’s terrific.

You see – while spelling a ten letter word in Scrabble, complete with triple-word-score Xs and Zs, will earn you the respect, and high-fives, of your opponents, Bookworm ups the ante by launching a gut-wrenching, slowed-down coupe-de-grace into the enemy’s gaudy mug. In other words, you haven’t lived until you’ve defeated a dish and spoon team with the power of “litigation” or “localization”.

Volume 2 offers plenty new books ‘n’ chapters to spell your way through, infinite replay mode, six mini-games and the usual staples carried over from the first volume – arena mode, a light narrative and plenty of chuckle-worthy descriptions. Your collection of stat-boosting items (like an Almanac that gives bonus points for spelling adjectives, or a necklace that powers-up gem attacks) is joined by a number of literary companions such as Mother Goose and the Cheshire Cat. They’re entirely superficial, but they add to the game’s fictional parody.

Hearkening back to PopCap’s pre-Plants vs Zombies catalogue, Bookworm holds the garish art style and saccharine colours that the botanical-RTS so effectively shed. The humour, however, carries over – Lex excitedly blurts out hilarious one-liners and each enemy is described in a witty caption. The game also offers all manner of achievements, trophies and badges, but only offering them in the infinite replay mode diminishes their appeal.

Here’s the recommendation then – Volume 2 serves as ample new content for Bookworm aficionados and verbose vocabunauts, but doesn’t have any fresh lures for those tired of PopCap’s Scrabble-esque antics. Only Bookworm obsessives, need apply.