I’ve got to admit, despite playing Scrabble for years (both the physical board game and the PC game), it can be a rather dour affair. No matter how you look at the game, it’s still a board and whole bunch of off-yellow tiles. This look, for some reason, was also adopted by many Scrabble clones and this is why I find Chris Garrett’s latest iOS title QatQi (pronounced as “cat-key”) to be an interesting word game with a very visually-stimulating interface.

The menu system looks like it was inspired from the LCARS interface from Star Trek, very colourful and a little confusing at times. But once you get into the puzzles, there’s no turning back. The levels themselves take the form of rooms and corridors. In them, you’ll need to form words from a limited set of letter tiles (just like Scrabble).

Be mindful though of the space that you are afforded in each puzzle, as you’ll need to finish off all your available tiles forming valid English words. Placing your tiles on certain spots can net you extra points and gold coins. All these goes into your score, which is then uploaded to global leaderboards. Putting up high value words will also get you a screenshot for you to put up on FB, Twitter, e-mail and even SMS… talk about bragging rights.

The post-puzzle screen is a feature that has been missing from many a word game in which it will tell you what words you have formed, along with the points scored for each individual word, plus a whole lot of other analytics. The LCARS influence is pretty evident here and even though I’m not sure whether this was intentional, the game’s designer deserves a pat on the back for coming up with this sort of look and feel.

QatQi is a tough game, due to two things, the need to finish of your tiles, and the size of the puzzles, and this very aspect of the game, along with the uber cool interface makes it a must have for word game lovers out there. Nineoverten.com rates QatQi at 4.5 out of 5! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The game is now available for free on the iTunes App Store, check it out over here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/qatqi/id519861748?mt=8