Alphabetty Saga takes Candy Crush Saga's addictive gameplay, and mixes it up with word searches. You're faced with a board of letters, and you have to find words in them, using squares that are adjacent or diagonal to each other.

Words in a 1930s mouse - world

The essence of Alphabetty Saga is simple: progressively harder boards of letters you must clear to proceed to the next. All words must be a minimum of 3 letters, and there are bonuses for finding longer ones. Sometimes you have to pop a certain number of bubbles on the board, or clear it so cheeses can fall to the bottom, and so on. Each objective requires a slightly different tactic, but each new kind of objective is introduced gently. Various power-ups are available as you progress, to help you clear the boards.

The game is presented in a bright, cheerful cartoon style, with gentle background music and sound effects. The game follows a 1930s mouse called Betty on an adventure through a miniature world, with her grandfather and his assistant Barney. But, like other King games, the characters are simply decoration, adding a little color to the core game.

Addictive gameplay

The basic structure of Alphabetty Saga you will recognize from Candy Crush. Journey through tons of levels, each with slightly different objectives and targets. When you lose, either repeat a level or buy in-game gold to give yourself a better chance. If you repeat a level, you lose a life - and these replenish once by one, every fifteen minutes you play.

So, lose too many times, and you'll find yourself either having to wait, or buy some gold so you can continue. It's a standard King system, and while it certainly encourages you to pay real money to play more, you can manage without if you are patient.

Another polished casual game from King

Alphabetty Saga is a word-based spin on a tried and tested formula. The game is full of all the congratulations and positive reinforcement that typifies King games, making it welcoming and compelling to play. Alphabetty Saga does fail a little as a word game - if you're looking to flex your internal dictionary muscles like in Scrabble, this is not the game for you. Nevertheless, making words is a nice change from matching colors!