Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The design of this game is not only ugly, but it gets in the way of playing it. Amazon produced two demo games for the Kindle that they are giving away for free, and they were very nice looking. On the other hand, Electronic Arts Scrabble looks like a cobbled together demo where the budget didn't allow for a designer and the programmer did the visuals. The problems boil down to: (1) Ugly, jaggedy, non-antialiased fonts and symbols (unlike the beautiful fonts in Amazon's games and in Kindle books) (2) No use of the Kindle e-ink display's 16-level gray scale capability, except in the non-play-related opening splash screen. All "gray" colors are rendered in bitmapped dithered gray like on the original black and white Macintosh. (3) Point bonus squares are indicated in dark, dithered gray with huge antialiased letters that are so prominent that the actual "game pieces" (letters) are hard to visually distinguish from the bonus squares, making visual scanning of the board difficult. Don't get me wrong: the actual logic and gameplay seems to be fine. But the visuals are horrible, and since they affect your ability to see what's on the board, this is not just a problem for graphically or design oriented people. I think a lot of the positive reviews are just pent up joy at finally having some apps on the Kindle. But when the number of apps increases I predict that Electronic Arts's Scrabble will stick out like a sore thumb as a particularly badly implemented app. Shame on a big company like Electronic Arts for allowing this to get out the door in this condition!