Spelling Bees were a time of fun and yet much frustration when I was younger. Sure, you got out of having class by doing an activity that was somewhat fun and yet educational at the same time, and it was a contest, so who didn’t enjoy a chance to show your friends just who was the best speller in the land? However, if you were anything like me, though you sailed through the beginning level words, by the time it got down to a handful of players, there was always that one person who always ended up winning while you fell short by a few words. Spelling Challenges and More, for lack of a better description, is me – works well for a time, but then falls apart and loses in the end.

Spelling Challenges and More (SCM from here on) has a career mode of sorts, which has you making money and trying to work your way up through the 100 difficulty levels by partaking in an assortment of challenges, not so much tied specifically to spelling, but language as a whole. When you begin each round, the game will ask you to spell correctly ten different words, and if this segment was treated like that nationally televised version you see every year, then perhaps there would be something more to this game than there currently is. Instead of someone telling you the word and you spelling, instead the game will quickly flash the word and then give you a definition. If you’re already seeing the word before you spell it, isn’t it more a Recollection Bee than anything else. The game will then tally up how many words you got right and give you money/points for each one right and how much time you had left. You’ll then move on to one of the next challenges, and so on and so on until you’ve completed four different rounds.

Once the spelling challenge is out of the way, other challenges come into play that aren’t always about spelling, but are to a degree in other cases. Challenges include Odd One Out (pick the one misspelled word), Right One (which word is spelled right), Fifty Fifty, Mishmash, Fill It In, Bomb Blast (find all the misspelled words before bomb explodes), Not Noun (find the word that isn’t a noun), Which Is It, Hit or Miss, and Catchword. A few of the extra rounds are too close together, making it seem like you’re just playing the same round with a different name, and in the end there just wasn’t enough difference to satisfy us. If the core of your game is supposed to be about spelling, we want to play a game that has to do with spelling…not taking a quiz on the English language as a whole.

After completing the four levels and getting your High Score, the game will then determine how well you did by how many answers you got correct, and then it will assign you a new difficulty level so that the next time you play the “career” level you will in theory be presented with a set of challenges more to your level, though in reality you’ll have to play several levels before it feels like it ever gets up close enough to you. Though you can move up naturally by playing, you can increase your difficulty level by gambling a bit, choosing whether a few extra levels are worth it or not, and the only thing you have to do is spell three words correctly (yes, these flash on the screen too). If you spell the three words correctly, congrats, you’re moving on ever higher. If you get them wrong, however, you’ll be standing still and not moving anywhere. And you know what…that’s it. There are over 25,000 words in the game, but once you’ve played up two levels, it feels as if you’ve already experienced everything the game has to offer; things get slightly harder, but it’s not enough. The game is greatly hampered by this word flashing mechanic, as it really, really needs the words spoken and making you spell that way.

Graphically the game is beyond simplistic, because all you are looking at is words and letters – it’s hard to make something like that look anything other than it is. The only thing really worth mentioning graphically is the spelling guy that appears once and a while, and who is actually animated somewhat. As for the audio, it’s mostly the ticking of a clock, and the chime or buzzer of a right or wrong answer.

Spelling Challenges and More might not be a bad educational game for kids, but parents, if you’re buying this for them, give them something that’s purely fun to offset it as well. As an educational tool, it isn’t bad, but as a pure “game” it’s not very fun or rewarding. If we had to choose between playing Spelling Challenges and More and watching the real deal on television, we’ll take those darling spelling nerds on the tube.

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