One of the freshest iOS games, Quarrel, will be hitting Xbox Live Arcade next week on the 25th January, and will only cost a cool 400 Microsoft Points ($5 USD). This version will also introduce online multiplayer to the title.
Quarrel is best described as “combat Scrabble”, as players must make the best scoring words out of an 8 letter anagram. The trick is that the player is presented with a global strategy of allocating soldiers and deciding where to make their attacks. The most a player can have is 8 soldiers, and when attacking, the player is forced to leave behind one soldier to control the territory, making their army smaller and smaller. Reinforcements add one to all armies up to a maximum of 8.
During a battle, players can only make a word from an anagram as long as the number of players there are and letter values are exceedingly important, since a word like “PUP” could outscore something like “PIECED”. It isn’t the length of the word, it’s the quality of the letters in the word.
One of the smartest aspects of the game is that if you’re only observing a battle between two players, you can make the best word you possibly can from the anagram they’re working from, to gain a bonus that works towards in-battle reinforcements. In that way, you never feel left out of the action.
To get an idea of what gameplay is like, check out the trailer for the iOS version in the video below.
