Playing iAssociate in iPhone...

Been playing around with the game iAssociate in iPhone. It's a really interesting game, interesting enough for me to buy it for USD1.99 :))

It's a simple word association game. You start out with one main "theme" word, which is already associated with several other words. Your only clues are the number of characters per word. In the demo version (which is the same as the first puzzle of the full version), you start out with the theme "Out of the blue" starting with the word Blue. Best to watch the video below:



Note it shows the number of "characters", not letters; oh yes, numbers and punctuation marks are included too! Figuring that out sooner could save you some time ;)

As of the moment, we have completed three levels: Out of the blue, Surfing the web, and Theme:Comics and Cartoons. Had some "web" help for the first and last one, while we did the middle one on our own, without help.

The Good:
Gameplay is very simple and straighforward. You have a word, think of words associated with that word, enter it. If its correct, you get clues to other words associated with it. Lather, rinse, repeat until you solve all of the words.

It's a great brainteaser and in some weird way shows just how much you know. For us, being able to complete the Surfing the web theme shows that we are very familiar with the web -- not surprising since we're both IT people. We had a hard time for some of the themes, such as some cartoon characters that we barely know about.

Once you solve some puzzles, you get some trivia about things. Pretty interesting for the bookish, I-like-to-read-a-lot-of-books type of person.

The Bad:
Like all puzzle games of this sort, it has very little replay value. Once you have figured out a puzzle, there's really no point retrying that puzzle again -- unless maybe if you have absolutely a lot of time to spare and you aim only to best your score -- the fastest time to solve a puzzle/theme.

Also, it might be frustrating at some points particularly for puzzles/theme that you have little or no knowledge whatsoever.

Of course, that's part of the challenge. But the sad thing is, once you know the answers, there's really no turning back; once you know, you know, and the puzzle is solved... Unless you have a way of "unremembering" stuff, you really can "enjoy" this game as long as you haven't solve the puzzle yet.

Oh well, better make my 2 bucks worth it. Hmm... What's a phrase consisting of 3 words (3+9+10 characters long), the first wword being 'The' that is associated to "Prison" and "Stephen King"?