Bookworm Adventures

About Bookworm Adventures

The player takes on the role of Lex the Bookworm (voiced by the Chief Creative Officer of PopCap, Jason Kapalka) through a number of stages, battling creatures along the way (which are largely based on Greek mythology, One Thousand and One Nights and Gothic fiction, while the foes in the game's sequel are based on fairy tales, Journey to the West and science fiction). Each battle consists of Lex squaring off against a given enemy. Both Lex and his enemy have health meters (represented by a number of hearts) which, when depleted, signal defeat (advance to the next section and complete the chapter if an enemy is defeated, and restart when Lex dies). However, unlike more traditional role-playing games where players can injure their opponents with arms or magic, enemies in Bookworm Adventures are damaged by forming words.

As in the original Bookworm, words are formed from a grid of available letters, although unlike the original, the letter tiles used to form the words need not be adjacent to one another. The longer the word which is formed, the more damage is done to the enemy. Similarly, words generated using letters which are less common do more damage than those using only common letters. The game also features gems, which are generated by spelling more powerful words. Each gem has different effects, such as healing Lex and inflicting debuffs to the enemy. The "scramble" feature from the original title returns in Bookworm Adventures, which replaces the letters currently on the grid with an entirely new set, at the cost of forfeiting a turn, so that the enemy gets a "free" attack.

Each turn, the player can form a single word, while enemies use one of their available attacks to damage Lex, inflict debuffs to him, heal or buff themselves, or manipulate the tiles in the grid. During battles, the player can see what attacks and abilities the enemy can use, located at the bottom-right portion of the screen. Some of these attacks can combine two or more effects. After each battle victory, Lex automatically recovers to full health before proceeding to the next battle; however, there are certain chapters that feature "Survival Battles" (still called boss battles in the first game), where Lex will not be healed between enemies.