Spelling has never been so fun? (Spellbound (DS))

Member Name: mchitty

Product:	Spellbound (DS)
Date:	10/02/09 (114 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A reason for hardcore spelling-lovers to buy a DS

Disadvantages: Superfluous game modes, gameplay is not well thought out

If there's one thing I find it hard to get particularly excited about, it's probably a game that centers around spelling, ranking just above a times tables recitation simulator.

I looked into Spellbound more out of curiosity than anything else. The packaging looks nice, and I wondered, how could you pull off a game about spelling? I was hoping to find out.

Spellbound is presented in the format of a quiz show. As a starting point, everything is nice and shiny, which is good, and makes the game inviting to play. Despite the fact that some of the menus are less than easy to navigate, everything looks reasonably nice as you would expect these days.

Unfortunately it all goes downhill from there. Of the many, many, many, many modes available to play in Spellbound, there are *very* few that stand out, or that you'd want to play. Give typewriters to a million monkeys and eventually they'll churn out the complete works of Shakespeare... well, give them some Nintendo DS Game Development software and it's likely that sooner or later they'll come up with a list of potential game modes for 'Spellbound'.

The problem isn't necessarily that the modes available are bad, or unplayable as such. They're just, for the most part, very samey and boring. For example, take 'Fifty Fifty' and 'Right One'. In each, you are given 2 words. One of which is spelt incorrectly, and the other is spelt correctly. In 'Fifty Fifty', you have to choose the incorrect word (or is it the correct word?). And in 'Right One', you have th choose the correct word (or is it the other way round!?!).

Either way, if you're really into spelling there's a lot to get through here. There are 100 difficulty levels, so this could be suitable for all age ranges. Although it could likely improve your spelling, I find it hard to get the motivation to play every day to see if it does or not! If only the gameplay were more fun...

Overall, Spellbound is a poor game. It's not without it's plus points, as it is essentially a solid spelling based game. However unfortunately it is full of pointless options and subgames and without any inspiration or innovation it flounders against more varied games such as 'Brain Training' and 'Big Brain Academy'.

Summary: A pretty poor game overall