The New York Times is starting to test its take on Scrabble
The New York Times' games team is trying something new: it's about to start testing a Scrabble-like game it calls Crossplay, but instead of folding the game into the main NYT Games app, Crossplay will be a standalone app. The game is soft launching in New Zealand on iOS on June 10th.
I was recently shown a demo of the game by Jonathan Knight, head of games at NYT, and I think it will look familiar to any fans of Scrabble or Words with Friends. The game takes place between two players. Each turn, your goal is to build a word out of the up to seven letter tiles on your tray and the letters already on the board. Every letter has a different point value, and you can boost your score by taking advantage of bonus tiles on the board that multiply your letter or word scores.
"We're really presenting a very pure, classic, elevated version of the game"
The NYT has a few of its own tweaks to differentiate Crossplay from similar games, including different positions for bonus tiles and a different letter distribution, Knight says. The end of the game has a clever twist, too: after all of the letter tiles have been drawn from the virtual bag, each player gets just one additional turn instea …
