Review: SPELL SMASHERS is a Fun Game of Spelling Monsters to Death
If you like word/spelling games and want to be able to spell monsters to death, you may be interested in checking out Spell Smashers from Renegade Game Studios. They were kind enough to send me a copy to review and it’s been fun.
The gist of the game is that you and the other players are adventurers going around and slaying monsters. The way you do this is by spelling words to deal damage. Typically, the bigger the word, the stronger the attack, but different letters have different values. Each monster fights back though and they typically have a special ability as well that can make them easier to kill, harder to kill, deadlier, or a bane as they help other monsters become stronger. After fighting monsters, the players then go to town and can get potions, gear, quests, or ale to help them in the battles to come.
This is pretty simple gameplay and that helps it be accessible to many people. Not everyone wants to play a deep or complex game and this is perfect for that crowd. The division of vowel cards and consonants gives you some control over your hand and being able to spell words. Also, the wound cards do a good job in my opinion of making you feel stuck while giving you plenty of options. It was annoying to get wounds, but they were never too overwhelming. Of course, the game has rules to address this by forcing you to go get healed in town if you ever have 5+ wounds. In addition, while there are rules about what to do if you can’t spell a word, but I never ran into that problem.
Spell Smashers can be played with as few as one player, but I found that the game was more fun with more players. I didn’t really enjoy the 2-player game I tried. If you want to play solo, there’s a whole mode designed for that. It changes a few of the rules, but is okay. It’s better than some games, and some people will really like it, but it’s just not a good fit for me.
Another point in Spell Smashers’ favor is the artwork. The art is a lot of fun to look at and I love how the monsters all work their letter into the art. It’s a lot of fun to look at and is honestly what drew me to the game in the first place.
The number one complaint that me and the other players had was that there weren’t enough components included. Namely, there were not enough coins. We were constantly scrambling to place enough coins on the monsters.
If you’re looking for a new word game, I would recommend Spell Smashers. It was quite a bit of fun and while I wouldn’t recommend buying it for its solo mode, the solo mode isn’t the worst.
