Having spent hours on Yahoo Games’ Text Twist, it would seem only natural that I should check out Nintendo’s latest Touch Generation title, Crosswords DS for the Nintendo DS.

Don’t let the title fool you as Crosswords DS is actually a compilation of three different types of word games, the kind that you will normally find in your Sunday paper. These are Crosswords, Anagrams and Word Search.

Like Writing on Paper

The game is played ala Brain Age, whereby the Nintendo DS is held book-style and like the aforementioned game, it is entirely stylus-based and caters for both left and right-handers. The Crosswords portion of the game is pretty engaging and while there are three levels of difficulty, the intuitive manner by which the letters are entered will make you feel right at home.

Yup, the game comes with hand-writting recognition and you write letters like how you would do on a Sunday paper crossword. Unlike the paper-based counterpart, you can get some hints whenever you are stuck, but to be fair, there’s a limited number of hints you can call upon and each call will result in a time penalty.

Text Twist Clone

Being a Text Twist addict, I actually had more fun playing in the Anagrams portion of Crosswords DS. The premise is pretty simple, you are supposed to form as many words as you can out of 6 letters. The touchscreen and stylus is used to drag and drop the letter tiles to form words.

My only grip about this section is that you can only save one anagram game in progress. Starting a new Anagram game would delete the previous save :(.

Spoilt for Choice

If there’s one game mode that epitomizes the Malay idiom “rambang mata” (having difficulty making a choice simply because there are so many choices) , that would be the Word Search portion of Crosswords DS. There are just so many letters.

My least favourite portion of the game, Word Search is definitely for the eagle-eyed and those who don’t mind staring at what looks like (in first glance) a whole bunch of neatly arranged random characters.

The Final Word

In any case, Crosswords DS is a gem of a game, especially for casual gamers and word game lovers. Whether is it hunting for words in Word Search or cracking your head over the latest clue or trying to create one last anagram, Crosswords DS does it with aplomb and with variety. There are hundreds, if not thousands of puzzles to occupy your time and for the price it is selling for, it spells out VALUE FOR MONEY.

Crosswords DS is available at Play-Asia and comes with free international shipping to certain countries. Click here for further details.