Random Monday : Edutainment Games (II) - Alpha Assault
Here’s another edutainment game to ease that irritating, nagging feeling of being totally unproductive at the computer - Alpha Assault, mentioned by Jay Is Games in one of April’s Friday Link Dumps.
In Likwid Game Studio’s Alpha Assault, your task is to spell out words with three or more letters from letters randomly arranged in a hexagonal grid. There’s a Castle on one of the hexes which you must prevent the evil grey hexes from invading it. Everytime you form a word, some of the evil hexes will blink faster as they grow stronger up to a maximum of 3 levels before they expand into neighbouring peaceful green or castle hexes and turn it into an evil one.
To advance in levels, you must form enough words to completely fill the experience meter at the bottom which will grant you new types of hexes for extra score bonuses as well as additional castles which you must protect at all costs. Clearing the grid of all hexes does not grant you an immediate advancement in level ; instead it grants you a score bonus which is quite disappointing in the sense that the grid is repopulated with a new set of evil grey hexes.
By forming words, you also earn coins which can be used to purchase letters to swap with existing letters on the hex grid to form longer words, or special abilities such as shuffling the existing letters (2 coins). Forming the bonus word on the top right will also grant you an one-time ability to change the letters of a hex and its 6 adjacent hexes.
Almost all English and Latin words are recognized. Unfortunately, I can’t understand why the word Pokemon isn’t 
Alpha Assault is great fun for those times when you want to play a browser game that offers more than just brainless clicking with some extra educational value to boot. The accompanying music is appropriately gloomy like stuff lifted out of a dark fantasy film.
Play Alpha Assault.
BACK @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Edutainment Games (I) - Typeracer
Learning Your A.B.Cs with Viva Caligula
Nice game, takes up way to much time
First try: 88864
To bad its not in Dutch. I keep seeing dutch words… It must be a whole lot easier for native speakers.
Yes, it does. I must have spent half a day playing it for this post, I mean “capturing screenshots”
A custom language dictionary should really increase the market for such games I suppose