Quarrel: He Says!

Author: Chad "Chizzle" Myers

Release date: 1/25/2012

Platforms: XBLA, iOS

Price: XBLA - 400ms Points

          iOS - $2.99/Free Version

Do you like Risk? Hell yes you do. You fucking LOVE Risk. Do you like words? No...maybe a little? Okay, just hear me out here fellas...

Tonight I was sitting around, wanting to play games with my wife. Yeah I like doing that, it makes me happy. Women whom play vidya games is hot, you know it. Yeah ya do. So I was sitting there wondering what games I could buy or download that Alissa (that's my wife) would like to play with me. I know she likes Scrabble (snore), and other word typely games. Personally, if every word game fell off the face of the planet I'd sleep better, but hey, I'm married and I have to sacrifice sometimes dammit.

So I'm looking around and I finally found a little XBLA game called Quarrel. And by Joe, it's alright. Basically this game is Risk with words.

You know how you take over territories in Risk by rolling a die? Well in Quarrel you do it by spelling words!

WORDS MOTHERFUCKER!

Every letter in the Alphabet has points assigned to it. The more rare the letter in the dictionary used in a word, the more points. Easy day. It's Scrabble dude.

The maps are made up of territories and you have some dudes on those territories. One match I played had me playing as pirates while the other team played as ninjas. Say I had 5 pirates on my territory and the opponent had 4 ninjas. This means I could have a 5 letter word, and the enemy a 4 letter word. So you get as many letters as you have characters on that piece of territory. 

This sometimes sounds better than it can really be. As stated before, the rare letters of the alphabet have higher points than the more common letters used in the English language. Just look at the above image, the word "JEDI" fucked up "NEED"...of course...

If you win the round, all but one of your little word destroying team tromps on over to the enemies territory, taking it over and leaving all but 1 of your little dudes in your currently occupying territory. 

Between turns you can choose to transfer troops from a territory to an adjacent connecting territory, upping its defensive and attacking abilities. One of your troops has to stay in the territory you just attacked from.

*sip* pardon me, I'm drinking tonight...

Anyway. So yeah, you invade that mother effers territory and it turns whatever color your character is assigned. In my experience it's been red. Maybe it's always red, who knows.

A...you know what. The game is 5 dollars. If you like Risk and can tolerate spelling words, get this game to play with your girl.

Quarrel: She Says

"A war of words, combining anagram action with simple strategy, all wrapped up in a distinctive, friendly style. Quarrel features characters of varying abilities to play against, each with their own unique vocabularies. Quarrel provides a huge range of fun, from simple casual play to fiendish challenges against the most verbally-dextrous anagram minds in the world!" -Quarrel's Webpage

Screenshot of the little dudes, cute huh?!

Quarrel was released for Xbox live arcade in January 2012. Word games are my favorite type of game, so naturally I love Quarrel! It combines strategy (lightly), with word building. It has very cute graphics and a fast pace. I enjoyed playing against the computer players, however the online play seems to be lacking people. You get a chance to attack, transfer little men to other territories or reinforce. Each turn you get a chance to conquer the territories that border your lands. Basically it's go until you lose. If you are evenly matched with your opponents it will be who gets the word the fastest that wins. So say the turn ends in a draw, the person who got their word the fastest will win. If you are attacking and you win you take over that territory and it becomes yours. It's a lot like risk in that aspect.

I would recommend this game for the female audience, it is fun and I enjoyed it! You should definitely check out Quarrel if you enjoy scrabble-like games.