You know, you have to wonder why MindFuel Games called this game Beyond Words when “Scrabbalatro” was right there? Because without putting too fine a point on it, Beyond Words pretty much is Balatro but with Scrabble instead of poker.
Whereas LocalThunk’s overnight phenomenon had you combining poker hands with improbable boosts and bonuses to generate ridiculous high score multipliers, Beyond Words does the same but with words and letters. It has a similar roguelike approach, where each run is finite and when it’s over you begin again, but with a stage-by-stage progression necessitated by its structure.
So each round you advance along a grid and need to score so much in each node to advance again. You’ll begin with a blank board of various sizes and shapes, peppered with multipliers, hazards, and other special tiles that affect the score of letters you’re putting down. Then you’ll have seven letters arranged randomly on your tile rack, mixed in with some question marks and asterisks that denote a free letter or a free vowel, respectively.
Using free letters will usually withhold their score, so there are downsides, but the benefit to using one to get a seven-letter word or higher on the board is massive, especially when you start adding in special cards that skyrocket your score multiplier. Some of these are double-edged though, offering plus-multipliers for certain conditions and minus for others. You should always read your cards and learn what each one does.
You buy them with coins between rounds in each run. A run itself is typically 9 rounds that get progressively tougher as the target score rises and the board is filled up with your clumsy word-smithing. Beyond Words is surprisingly lenient with nouns, though, as well as with some words that I’m sure aren’t English. Oh, and it allows some swears, which I appreciated when I got a seven-letter bonus for “Asshole”. Most rounds will allow you to discard and redraw up to three tiles three times, which can be a real game-changer when you’re looking for a specific word.
Just like learning what each card does, it’s worth learning what each of the myriad special board spaces does, as well as what the conditions are for each type of run. Some have timed turns, and if you run out of time whatever you lay will score no points. Some will shuffle letters, adding and removing them each round. With no multiplayer element you’ll play Beyond Words against yourself, aided by the capricious hand of RNG.
In that respect it’s incredibly addictive. I played mostly on Steam Deck, which has an issue when played with the touchscreen that you can’t mouse over the modifiers before buying them in the store. If you click on them you purchase them instantly, whereas with a mouse you can hover over them and make a decision. The same goes for the multiplier cards. Sure you’ll learn what they do over time, but I lost a few runs by not paying due care, and hamstringing my own score multipliers.
Every so often you’ll face a “Boss” round, where one or more benefits are disabled. So you might not be able to score off the letters in the word “OWLS”, for example, or you might be blocked from scoring two words at a time. Often these negatives serve as little more than annoyances, and I failed more runs based on simply running out of braincells than because a Boss round was tough.
As far as audio goes, there isn’t much to report. There are some satisfying clicks and rattles, particularly when the AI dealer refills the tile bag and you get the familiar scratchy click of plastic scrabble tiles knocking together, or when you hear a little twinkle as you pass a round. Visually it’s bright and colourful, but as also fairly functional and unexciting. Some themed boards or backgrounds would have gone a long way here.
Ultimately, Beyond Words doesn’t really require you to be good at competitive Scrabble. All it requires is that you have a decent set of “Scrabble Eyes” and are able to piece words together from scattered letters. You’re rewarded for longer rewards so being creative helps, but you’re rarely penalised for just going for a 30-letter word that triggers some multipliers in a pinch. Beyond Words may not end up being the overnight sensation that Balatro was, but for those of a more literary persuasion, it’s a fun time-killer and a nice way to exercise the old prefrontal cortex.
