Update: Playmation Studios has explained that the push notifications go through the Game Center notification, but after double checking I still couldn’t find it. Notifications did automatically turn on once the game was fully released.
The original review can be found below.
Playmation Studios is a mobile studio with two titles now under its belt: the previously released Sleep Furiously, and Sentence Wars.
Sleep Furiously is a word game based around constructing sentences and creating dreams. You work on a timer, and the more dreams you construct, the better you do in your round. The game will also show you the longest dream you ended up constructing, but like Sentence Wars, you must keep it grammatically correct.
Sentence Wars is a game focused on creating ridiculous – but grammatically correct – sentences to play against one another. The game connects two players through Game Center and allows you invite your friends to play with you, or play with strangers. There is no chat between the two players, but you can look over previously played sentences and share them to social media.
The goal of the game is to get as many points as possible, ‘capturing’ tiles that are being used on the board. Whoever captures the most words wins the round.
The menus for Sentence Wars are a little flat, but it works nicely with the aim of the game. At the moment of trying the game, it hadn’t been released yet, so I didn’t have many people to play with. I currently have one game going, and it has been 5 hours since I was last matched. My opponent has yet to respond.
The matching system is very stable from what I have seen, and I don’t have an “error” connecting like I would when playing other mobile games. If nothing else, Sentence Wars is very well coded.
One of the flaws of Sentence Wars is the lack of push notifications. I don’t want the app to spam me, but I don’t even have the option to turn them on if I want to be alerted about someone responding to a match. No matter where I went in settings, I couldn’t turn on notifications for the game. This will create a lack of responding from opponents, and it’ll only be a ‘when they remember’ type of response time.
You can only have a few games open at a time for free, before you are prompted to either watch an ad or buy the full version for $3.49 on the App store. The game could run banner ads, or perhaps offer a .99c purchase for the full thing to avoid the free-to-play model that has taken over the app store.
Even with that in mind, the ads are not that long, intrusive, or boring. I simply set my phone down while I let it run its course, and jump back into creating a hoard of games that will one day have a partner. The ads running is a small flaw, but nothing that will ruin the experience of the game for you.
When the game can’t find you someone else already waiting for a partner, you will be prompted to create the first sentence. After you submit your turn, you are entered into a queue and continue waiting for a partner to be matched up with you.
This game definitely isn’t meant to be played constantly, rather, checking in and responding to matches when you have the time; the game will sneak up and consume little bits of your life when you least expect it. While it definitely isn’t the best word game I have ever played, it’ll probably stay on my phone for at least a few months.
You can find more about Sentence Wars on its website here, and Playmation Studios’ own website as well.