Phew. I’ve just finished playing ace new word game Dungeon Scroll. I got a score of about 450,000 or so, putting me fourth the world… out of 125. So, not many copies of the game have been sold just yet, then. That’s hopefully a testament to the fact that it’s new, because first impressions suggest that it deserves to sell a lot more copies.

If you want to know what kind of game it is, think a real-time Bookworm Adventures with graphics in the style of old school first-person RPGs.

Oh.

You’ve never played Bookworm Adventures?

Bother.

Okay, let’s start again.

The game starts. You’re faced with an enemy. You have a grid of letters and you click on them to spell a word. When you submit it, the enemy loses health, the tiles return to your hand and you have to spell a different word, all while your health depletes on a timer. After a certain number of fights, you move on to the next dungeon, which basically means your health is completely refilled and you get a new set of letters.

That’s the basics, without mentioning the special tiles you find that can only be used once and the choice of bonuses and a few other wrinkles that add to, but don’t change, the main thrust of the game.

Basically, you’re using your tiles to spell as many words as possible as quickly as possible. If you’re faced with a rat, a three letter word might off it in one hit. If there’s a dragon, though, you better pull out the long words – and hope you’ve not used them all already on lesser enemies.

It’s great, great fun. I started it at my desk this lunchtime and couldn’t stop playing until I’d won the game. Yes, won the game. In one forty-five minute sitting. Without even getting close to dying at any point. But, you know, it’s about the scores. I will most definitely be going back to see if I can move up the leaderboard – and there’s also a harder difficultly level to try at some point.

It may not be an epic adventure, but I can see myself playing this many times. Whether I do or not remains to be seen.

(I also want to check if you get random letters in each dungeon or not. I doubt I’ll be able to tell unless I play through several times.)

Anyway, the introductory price is a mere 59p, so there’s no question about whether or not you should buy it. Even if I never play it again, 59p for a lunchtime filled with that amount of fun is cheap.