Social game maker Zynga is out with a sequel to its hit game Words with Friends (WWF), one of the most downloaded and played word puzzle game world over. The update has come at a time when the company is in dire need for a change in fortune after recent disappointing results in the second quarter this year.
Completing five years, the game is being played by close to a 100 million people anytime of the day around the world. The new update is a complete revamp of the app and comes as a standalone. The old WWF will still remain as Zynga doesn’t want to alienate people who’d want to continue with the old gameplay. The old players will still be able to swipe tiles with the new ones though.
The new update comes with an offline play wherein you could play against an AI even when you are offline. This was one of the most asked features by the users for a long time and the company has finally responded to the request. Named Solo Play, the feature will have computer play with human skill level and the moves he’s ever made on the game.
Also on the update is a Dictionary, by Dicitionary.com which will help players during the game to know which words are legitimate and also their meaning and pronunciation. This will be a learning curve for the players and help them come up with new words each time they play against their friends.
Community Match – a feature much like the app Tinder too finds its way into the game where players can have match against the opponents who are nearby and also select whether that person is male or female. To skip the person you slide to your left and to ask for a match you slide to your right. If the person accepts, the match begins.
More new features have been introduced with Statistics and Word Strength, which will show the user’s head-to-head statistics and how many points the word will fare when you put it on board, respectively. One of the biggest advantages of Word Strength is you get to know if you’d like to try for an alternative word which will fetch you more points before you finalise it in on your turn.
The Farmville developers are not stopping here. The company has a long list of games coming in 2015. Zynga has signed licensing rights with National Football league and NFL Players Inc. to use NFL teams and athletes as well as multi-year partnerships with Tiger Woods to come up with games based on golf.
Zynga has also announced a deal with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to license the Looney Toons brand and come up with the game which will launch next year. Certainly seems like Zynga is adding some zing to its game roster finally.