Beyond Words PC review — To the letter

Seeing “From the makers of GoldenEye” on a word-based rogue-lite wasn’t on my bingo card for. . . well, any time period whatsoever. Beyond Words is basically a cross between Scrabble and Balatro made by two former members of Rare, who also famously went on to make the Timesplitters games. The result is a highly compelling game that really does a lot with its premise, with the caveat that the art style is pretty bland and you have to be very fond of Scrabble to really enjoy it.

Beyond Words is divided into a few dozen challenges or so, each with its own board and limitations. Playing a challenge unlocks the next one in a line and all the boards they take place on are unique and typically follow some sort of theme with different shapes, such as vehicles. They also have their own bonus spots on the board when words are played on them that add extra points or a multiplier, or even upgrading how much space you have for your cards. Cards come in power and booster varieties and can be purchased between rounds, just like in Balatro.

Playing words gets you both points and coins, the latter of which is used to buy cards, perks, and booster packs. You can have up to five power cards at once by default, and these trigger every time you play a word. You’ll only be able to hold two booster cards at once, though, but you can use them whenever. Some of them upgrade how many points you get for using words of a specific length, others have various effects that are useful in the middle of a round. Each challenge has nine rounds and you’ll need to score a certain number of points within five words to progress to the next.

As Beyond Words is mostly Scrabble, that same skillset applies. You get a rack with seven tiles on it, which can be either letters or tiles that allow you to place vowels or any other letters on the board. Every word’s pointage is based on a combination of a tile’s worth, what level the world length is, and any additional points and multipliers that your cards add. It’s surprisingly in depth, although I really don’t care for the fact that it requires so many points for successive rounds. I wish the points carried over, but then I suppose the scores wouldn’t be so based on your power cards and making use of the board to score ridiculous combinations.

There’s a lot of strategy required to score well here, of course. You have to choose where you play on the board and using your letters to play multiple words simultaneously is a big help, although much of this is standard for Scrabble. Adding in the bonus spots on the board and choosing moves that correspond to your cards and perks adds a considerable amount of extra depth. If you’re not really good at Scrabble, you’ll likely find the game to be quite difficult, as it’s far from easy to survive all nine of each challenge rounds if you aren’t already proficient in the gameplay.

Boards have a lot of variety, not just in regard to the shapes on them, but to their shapes themselves. Some require you to build out words in certain directions in fairly limited ways. A few challenges have rounds on timers too, which really changes things up. Some challenges also lock you into specific power cards and many rounds have negative limitations that change the way you’ll need to play to succeed. There are also boss rounds with hefty limitations that can make it harder to not fail (such as rounds that require you to only play five-letter words.) It’s clear that a ton of careful thought went into all aspects of the game.

I don’t have much negative to say about Beyond Words at all beyond the aforementioned bland artstyle. The many challenges will take a good chunk of time to get through (especially if you’re incredibly indecisive and bad at Scrabble like I am,) the random aspects make it fun to replay challenges you’ve already completed, and the game has a lot of depth. It all combines to make for one of the more intriguing games of its ilk that has a much higher skill ceiling than similar titles.

Consider checking out our previous review:

Mouse: P.I. For Hire PC review — Black and white are all I see |