It was difficult pulling me away from Quarrel at last E3. Just ask my husband (Gil: Dragged by the arm, literally, to the next meeting)! Only a few minutes and I was totally into it: it was cute, colorful, and it was a word game! We have been impatiently waiting to play it ever since, and now I have my quality time with anagrams from the comfort of the sofa.
Quarrel is a strategy/puzzle game that uses Scrabble rules: letters have different values and your total word score is based on that. However, Quarrel takes the form of a territory conquering strategy game, much like Risk. Your troops attack neighboring territories, and the maximum length of your word is determined by the amount of soldiers you attack with. You can have up to eight soldiers in a “battalion”.
During the attack phase, you and your opponent are given random letters. Each set of letters always has an 8-letter anagram, but you’ll always be limited to the number of soldiers to make a word. The winner is the one who scores the highest word. Sometimes it happens that you both score the same, and in that case, the fastest to type is declared the winner. I especially like how troops scream according to the total score of the word: the more points, the louder they scream!
Conquering a territory means you leave one soldier behind and advance with the remaining troops. Obviously, this leaves your initial territories vulnerable as you move forward, but you are allowed to deploy troops between adjacent territories. Once you’ve transferred soldiers between two territories, you can’t attack with either of them, though. If you win against your opponent with fewer soldiers than they have, then you take a prisoner. At the end of your turn you receive additional troops (reinforcement phase).
There are three single-player game modes available, Domination, Showdown and Challenge. Domination is a progressive series of matches that place you against one to four adversaries of increasing difficulty, in an effort to control all the Quarrel islands. Showdown places you against all adversaries in a series of one-on-one matches. Challenge offers some twists on the basic mechanics, focusing on a single task, such as conquering the island while initially owning a single territory, surrounded by three enemies, or taking a prisoner from each opposing faction. All modes grade you with Bronze, Silver and Gold medals depending on your performance.
The gameplay is addictive and competitive. Your AI opponents are different, and you will notice their strengths or weaknesses as you battle them. Some type really fast, others are very slow, while some go straight for the highest scoring letters. You may be winning and owning most territories, then all of a sudden the tides are turned and you find yourself limited to a single group of soldiers because every other territory only had a lonely little guy to defend it. Your total scores all add up to give you a bonus backup soldier if and when you need one. You can see it as the meter in the circle around your avatar gradually fills up; once you have a backup, you can call it at the beginning of your turn.
You can also earn points by being a spectator while the other players take their turns. While they fight each other, you have a chance to solve an anagram with the 8 letters presented to you, or at least find the best word you can.
While Quarrel may be repetitive, and possibly best played in short bursts, there is never a dull moment during a match. And you can use dirty words too to spice things up. I actually lost a particular match to something as vulgar as “c*m”. Well then! Now that was unexpected… Sort of like, “Take that, you educated word-maker! My dirty word scored higher than your morally correct one!” Well, at least in single-player modes, since this isn’t allowed on Xbox Live matches.
For 400 MSP, Quarrel is a charming and entertaining strategy/puzzle. If you’re into either genre, you might want to grab it and enjoy your little pirate, ninja or alien troops making adorable and hilarious noises as you conquer the world with the fury of… spelling!
Special thanks to Stephanie Palermo and UTV Ignition for providing a copy of this title.