Four pictures. One Word. Countless time spent playing this addictive game. There isn't a lot to it, but that's just fine by us. 4 Pics 1 Word is a smooth, fun and well designed game that's free to play and can offer hours upon hours of entertainment. With now millions of downloads in the Play Store, this game is certainly doing something right.
Check out our impressions and some more information about 4 Pics 1 Word after the break.
The name of the game says it all -- you're given 4 pictures that describe just 1 word, and have to choose from the letters given to find what the word is. That's pretty much all there is to this game, but that's exactly why it's so much fun and easy to spend so much time on it. The design of the game is quite nice, even if you don't care much for the fake leather stitching at the top, and helps the overall appeal of the game. There's no settings or menu system to speak of, and the only thing you can "tweak" is turning the sounds on or off.
The game is pretty clearly just a port from iOS with very minimal interface changes, evidenced particularly by the Facebook sharing screen which is designed to look just like an iOS app, but we think we can give it a pass at this point. The differences would likely be more apparent if this was a more intensive game with more settings, options and controls. But the game runs so smoothly and is simple enough that it doesn't make a difference whether or not it was natively designed to run on Android.
You can jump right into the game from the main screen and be taken straight to the first four pictures. Once you guess correctly, you're given "coins" based on how many tries it took to get the word right, and the red counter at the top of the screen reflects how many in a row you've been able to complete. Coins are added up in the top right, and can be used to help you guess on harder words. Spending 90 coins will remove letters to help narrow down your options, and 60 coins will reveal a letter in the answer.
4 Pics 1 Word is free with no ads, and that means that part of the "freemium" model is paying cold hard cash for extra coins in the game. You can buy coins to help you move through the levels, in increments from 350 for $0.99 to 10,000 for a whopping $19.99 in-app purchase. It should be noted however that there's no need to buy coins to get through the levels, only to help speed things along. If a developer is going to take up a freemium model, we prefer that they do it this way.
If you're looking for a well-done time wasting game, then look no further than 4 Pics 1 Word. Players of any age can get hours of entertainment out of this game, and the price is certainly right.