Boggle Battles: Spellirium

If I were asked to list the things that I most enjoy, pointing, clicking and playing with words would probably all be in the top ten, along with 'almost any pizza' and 'a good book that makes me feel clever without actually being too challenging on the old skull-mush'. Therefore, I've developed an immediate interest in Spellirium, which claims to combine Boggle and LOOM, being an adventure game in which combat and puzzles are solved through wordplay. Hopefully, it'll be compulsive in the same way that Puzzle Quest is but with more developed story parts. There are a few work in progress videos, with no sound, two of which I've inserted below. Did I mention it's from (one of) the creators of Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure?

That is a fight against a blue monster that can only be hurt by blue tiles, with a hunter companion providing backup by blasting away at unwanted letters to make chains and combos easier to stitch together. There are also creatures that grow larger when you use large words against them, so they can be chipped down using a monosyllabic onslaught. Hopefully there will be plenty more imaginative stuff like that as well, but it's not all fighting!

You're either the person who finds the idea of building synonyms and words related to 'cut' to shear a sheep brilliant and adorable or you're not. I enjoy placing letters into sequence to create language and if there's a thread of narrative running through a game I'm more likely to stick so I shall attach one of my eyes to Spellirium's website to follow development. It will be released in 2012, so expect it tomorrow/months from now.