GDC 2013: Ananse Productions Gets Clever with Letters

ometimes, the best and most addictive games show up on the most compact platforms. Tetris, for instance, took the world by storm, and most folks preferred playing it on the Game Boy as opposed to the NES. Keeping this in mind, being in a golden mobile age presents a many opportunities for developers looking to create enjoyable experiences for these widely used on-the-go-platforms.

One such game, Letter Clever from developer Kwasi Mensah of Ananse Productions, features addictive Tetris and Scrabble-like qualities in a competitive word game frenzy. The mobile title even breaks new grounds by including play options for the blind, so yes -- this game will literally speak to you.

Letter Clever plans on featuring two multiplayer options: offline and online. Friends can trade off playing on a single phone as they attempt to both build new words and destroy those belonging to other player’s at the same time. There’s even a one-player mode that places on-the-go gamers against a CPU.

Switching letters back and forth while experiencing the combined Tetris-like mechanics presented an interesting take on word games we haven’t yet seen. Once released, one could only imagine the hilarious competitive moments between friends as they battle for supremacy in the world of words.

The basic text-to-speech function, which even totes multilingual capabilities, describes the position of particular letters and open options available to players. The feature’s still in the works but seems very promising for being an innovative experience for allowing play for anyone with limited vision. It’s forward-thinking design strategies like this that make the independent mobile games sector of the industry one of the most intriguing for our time. With Mensah and other programmers looking to share the world of gaming with everyone they can, the possibilities remain endless.

There’s no exact release date for Letter Clever, but Mensah recently stated on a forum post that he’s looking at about a two month window. The developer’s also searching for additional beta testers, so interested parties can also visit the post on Touch Arcade.