How many points would a Word Wizard score in Spellwood if a Word Wizard spelled ‘Spellwood’? None. You’d score none points, because ‘Spellwood’ is not a real word. But it is a real game: would-be wizards, behold! ‘Spellwood’, from the crafty Spellomancers at Three Rings — spellers of fine words (and developers of the games behind them) Spiral Knights and Puzzle Pirates – is now available on Google Play for Android smartphones and tablets, and iOS for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch — featuring support for iPhone 5′s increased screen size. The game is available now for $1.99:

• at the App Store
• on Google Play

Spellwood pits you against friends or — in a key feature — against the game itself in a clever single-player campaign. The game is a Scrabble-style word game: you’re given point-scoring tiles and build words to score points, which gradually knock out the opposing player. The game clears off the clutter of extra words every turn, keeping your strategy focused on the word-at-hand, as you hone your word-crafting abilities and plot to out-spell your opponent — special tiles give you bonus points or restore your health, giving the game an extra bit of strategic flavor.

Being able to play in single player mode is one of the key features: while you will still be able to challenge friends in one-on-one competition, you can now unleash your word wizardry at whatever pace you like, anytime and anywhere: single player mode will guide you through the mysterious towers of Spellwood Academy, as you hone your wits to fend off over 90 adversaries with different levels and styles of play. Friends and family can play together through Game Center or Facebook Connect. Meanwhile, multiple game modes and in-game items that do things like restore health or even change the size of of the playing field help keep the game lively and varied. Find out more at http://www.spellwood.com or check out the below trailer:

Ten years — was there even an internet ten years ago? Computers? The wheel? Cars? It is literally too long ago for anyone alive today to remember, a time lost to myth, and internet access that was charged on an hourly basis. We don’t know what it was like back then in the Long Before, but we do know one thing.

There were boats.

Not just any boats, mind. Boats governed by pirates — pirates with predilections for puzzles.

Precisely.

“Yarrr”, you might say. “Get to the point or taste the steel o’me cutlass!” And right you’d be to say that, even though the blog headline … I mean, it’s right up there!

Okay, here we go: Congratulations to our partners at Three Rings for celebrating the 10-year Anniversary of ‘Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates‘!

As a feat of magnificent derring-do, this probably can’t be understated. How many games — particularly an online game created by an independent start-up right at the crush of the dot-com boom – can say they’ve made it ten years? And yet here we are, talking with piratey swagger about an online game that has existed since — and I haven’t researched this but I am sure I’m right — before telephones.

It helps that the game is infectiously fun — the appeal of both puzzles and pirates, after all, is forever. It helps that a dedicated team of workers effectively said “yes, let’s stake our livelihood on the success of this video game about ships and puzzles.” Puzzle Pirates: I beam with pride at you, and raise a glass of hearty grog in your direction:

If you can coax an MMORPG through a decade of ups and downs, including a shift from subscription to free-to-play way before that was something all the cool kids started doing, then I think that’s some significant booty.

But don’t take my word for it. Here — er, I mean, Avast! Click here to read the official Puzzle Pirates blog, where Daniel James, co-founder/Captain of Three Rings, shares some of his thoughts on this milestone.

Finally, let’s close with a video taken from a recent party at the Three Rings headquarters — a pirate-themed party, naturally (it is possible they dress this way normally, I’m not sure, it’s a pretty awesome office, which, yes, that’s a model of the TARDIS. I think it is fully functional, too).

Anyway, this was to celebrate the decade anniversary of the game — what else is there to say after ten years? Well, why don’t you watch and see …