A familiar and yet refreshing take on word puzzles | Review - Molecano

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✨Overview

Molecano is a mobile word puzzle game that takes players journey throughout food and volcanoes with Molene the mole. Developed by the creator of Dadish and Super Fowlst, the game offers a blend of scrabble/crossword and Wordscapes-style puzzles, requiring players to form words out of jumbled letters and connect the words together on the map. 🟩Pros +A familiar and refreshing word puzzle game experience +Relaxing and chill art design and soundtrack +The puzzles are really engaging and challenging +Over 400 levels to complete

🟥Cons -Can feel too complex and might not resonate well with the more casual puzzle players -Not much to do outside advancing through the levels ⭐️Score: 8/10

📖Premise

Molecano revolves around guiding Molene across volcanoes by constructing words as traversible bridges. The goal is to collect delicious food scattered across lava-laden levels. This premise is pretty much basic and doesn’t really make sense, but at least there’s one. 🎨Visuals and Art

Molecano features a vibrant and cartoonish art style that feels sleek, clean, and simple. The characters, including Molene, are simple but charmingly well-designed. The overall art appeal feels really polished and premium. But perhaps the highlight of the art direction is the soundtrack; as it features an wwesome relaxing jazz soundtrack thats above and beyond most casual puzzle mobile games. Honestly, you could just stop playing and just listen to it and still chill and relax. 🎮Gameplay

The gameplay in Molecano offers an interesting fusion of scrabble-style puzzles and Wordscapes, creating a dynamic and interactive experience. Players must string words together to help Molene traverse obstacles and reach the coveted food items. What sets Molecano apart is not just the challenge of forming words but the strategic aspect of choosing the right words to unlock paths to snacks. And just like scrabble, these words must have an an overlapping letter in order to connect, and all connecting letters must form a valid world. The game's mechanics provide an interesting twist on popular puzzle games. It's not just about finding all possible words but figuring out which ones will lead to the snacks, and you’re only given up to 6 words to generate to complete the objectives and retrieve all the food. You can earn coins by forming 5 or 6 letter words, which allows you to unlock other characters. Overall, the puzzles are really engaging, challenging, and will feel familiar and refreshing at the same time. It’s only a singleplayer experience, but you’ll easily find yourself cooperating with your friends and families to solve puzzles together. However, the combination of both Wordscapes and Scrabble-style puzzles really amps up the difficulty and complexity and it might not resonate well with the more casual puzzle players (like our typical aunts and uncles) looking for something simple to pass the time. ⏫Progression

Molecano offers a substantial 400 levels with the promise of more to come, providing a vast amount of content for players to explore. The progression, however, is somewhat linear, primarily focused on advancing through levels. There’s not much to do aside from that; Challenges, objectives, or a star-rating system would have given some layer of depth to the levels. Indeed there are characters to unlock, but they are just cosmetic changes and doesn’t affect the gameplay in anyway. And even then, unlocking these characters costs a bit too much for my linking, and you'll most likely not unlock one until you've finished 30 or so levels. Having to grind for them doesn't make any sense since there is no way to use real money to unlock these characters anyway. 💵Monetization

The game is free-to-play but with occasional ads every time you reset the level, use a hint, or advance. Although there is a cheap one-time fee to fully remove the ads. As said earlier, there are characters to unlock, but it’s not part of the in-app purchases and can only be bought with in-game coins acquired through play. 📊Technical Performance

The user interface is intuitive and user-friendly, allowing players to navigate through levels and manage in-game features without any hassle. As I said before, the game feels really polished and premium, even in its user interface. Overall, my experience has been smooth and responsive. ⚖️Conclusion

Molecano stands out as a solid choice for those seeking a challenging yet laid-back mobile puzzle game. The game introduces a familiar and yet refreshing take on word puzzles, combining well popular elements with its own unique spin. The game's visual appeal, accompanied by a delightful jazz soundtrack, creates a relaxing atmosphere. For anyone that is looking to play Wordscapes or Scrabble-type games on mobile, I’d highly recommend checking this title out.

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