The game itself is very good. Pure Scrabble. HOWEVER, the ads damage the game’s credibility. On occasions, some ads have no close button so it’s impossible to continue play. Other ads you’re going round and round in circles pressing the tiny close button that won’t go away. Occasionally, when not in the Scrabble app, one of the ad’s rectangular backgrounds randomly flashes on my screen, causing lagging which I’m concerned about and concerned there’s now a bug on my phone. It makes you dislike the ads that don’t close and like the ones that do. That’s not how marketing is supposed to work but there are some companies I wouldn’t go anywhere near because of this aggressive marketing. Do the companies understand what’s happening and know that their products leave a nasty taste in the mouths of people being held hostage and forced to watch over and over and over again. The ad developers must surely be responsible for ensuring ads run error free to promote a product efficiently and effectively. The feedback and improvement phase of their project development plan needs a serious overhaul. If I was the manager I’d be concentrating on those areas.

Not the worst thing I’ve ever played but there’s some REALLY annoying things which put me off playing. Namely - why make people go to their inbox and individually accept every reward earned?! Just add the rewards automatically! It makes no sense whatsoever, I don’t see any benefit to either players or the developers for making people do this. It’s so annoying and takes forever, tapping and tapping on rewards to open them then having to tap again on a review of what you’ve just seen… AAGGHHHH just stop, it’s unnecessary and frustrating! Also there are WAY too many bot “players” it’s surely not necessary is there’s supposedly so many actual real life people playing this game all over the world. It’s really off putting and very obvious, it makes the game feel very boring and almost monotonous. It’s lead me to ignore any requests from other players because they’re usually bots. Finally why do I need to see a chat bubble just to tell me how many times I’ve won/lost against a player? I don’t care, put that info elsewhere or leave it in the chat but we don’t need that new message icon telling us there’s a new stat in the chat (usually it’s a false alarm too fyi). If we were playing more real people then maybe I’d care about those stats but all I get is bots… such simple things overlooked it seems the developers must not play the game themselves or surely they’d get as annoyed by these dumb things as everyone else. Pull your finger out Scopley!

It’s painfully frustrating. Apart from the fact that I just want to play Scrabble, it is so full of bugs, it’s unreal. Crashes constantly and has cost me a small fortune in gems, the game’s ‘currency’ for certain areas. I was compensated with 20 but seriously, the countless crashes have cost me hundreds. Played my daughter at ‘normal’ Scrabble and it crashed a few times. Some of the so called ‘human opponents’ seem rather fake. One player apparently had an average score of 14 per word (mine was 25) and he played like something possessed with words that you can’t even imagine. I won 410 to 400 but it was one of the toughest games I’ve ever played. A bit suspect, IMO. you get a free entry to other games in the app but it crashes when you use it and when it comes back up, your freebie has gone and it’ll cost you maybe 12 gems. Try that a couple of hundred times. Yes I have as I’m almost leading in the Golden League. Daily freebie. Crashes. Play the one on one 1 to 20 ascent games. Crashes when you’re winning so then counts as a loss. Comes back up to start again and you then have to watch a video or pay gems to play. It’ll crash during or after the video. And trust me, with all this going on, your hoard of gems disappears quickly. I’ll try and stick it out for the final level/league but then that’ll be it...it’ll be getting removed and I’ll just hope that one of these days, someone will release something the same as the solid, normal, reliable game that we had. Disappointing to say the least.

Scrabble, in its pure form, is for me one of the true classic games. It’s not quite as nuanced as chess but it does evoke the same quiet contemplation that comes with a deceptively simple yet endlessly replayable concept. It doesn’t need any bells or whistles, and it doesn’t need to be glamourised or modernised. It is what it is and that’s more than enough.Scrabble Go, regrettably, is a hallucinogenic nightmare bulldozing through a tranquil field for absolutely no reason (unless you count capitalist greed, which I certainly don’t). The countless perplexing and unnecessary add-ons are one thing, but the user interface of the app is another entirely. To put it simply, it’s like watching the abstract warp sequence from the third act of 2001: A Space Odyssey whilst enduring a blinding migraine. It’s a complete mess. Exploring this thing is like hacking a machete through the endless thicket of a technicolour swamp. I also don’t appreciate being notified 5 times a day about chests or tiles or challenges just because I have to keep notifications on to see when my dad has played his next move. Seriously, leave me alone.I’m glad I kept the old Scrabble app on my phone to play against the computer but seeing as I’m indefinitely stuck indoors on lockdown it would be nice to challenge the family and friends I miss so much to a game without the sensory assault and shameless butchery of tradition that comes with it.