'Wordament' sequel hopesto tap Scrabble fan base

One of Microsoft's best mobile apps has hatched a sibling: Wordament, the ridiculously addictive word game that two Microsoft employees built at home in their spare time.

The Boggle-like game was so good, Microsoft acquired it and moved the creators, Jason Cahill and John Thornton, into the entertainment group where they now have a five-person studio supplemented by five outside contractors.

Wordament isn't in the same class as Temple Run or Angry Birds. But since launching three years ago, it has kept growing and now draws about 1 million players a month.

Players compete against each other in a continuous series of two-minute matches that are orchestrated by the Xbox Live gaming service.

The free, ad-funded game is now the 12th most-used "modern" app on Windows 8 and serves more ads than any Microsoft game because people spend so much time playing it.

As an encore, the team has launched a sequel called Wordament Snap Attack, available now for Windows Phones and Windows PCs, and later this summer for Android and iOS devices.

Snap Attack is a free, Scrabble-type game in which players receive seven letters they can use over and over to make words during a 2½ -minute session. The letters snap into place on the game board, which has a few words in place to build upon.

At the end of each round players are shown words they could have created and how their score ranks on a global leaderboard. Then it starts all over again, with a new game board each time.

Compared with Wordament, Snap Attack is more complicated, and it might take a few rounds to get the hang of it.

But there's potentially a much bigger audience, Cahill said, since there are more Scrabble players than Boggle players in the world.

The new game probably won't help Microsoft catch Apple and Google in the mobile space. But it might appeal to those who do use the platform and those who wonder if it's still possible for creative new projects to hatch and grow amid Microsoft's giant, established businesses.

Snap Attack is available in the Windows Store for Windows Phone 8 and 8.1 and Windows 8.1. Versions for iOS and Android are ready but they won't be released until summer.

This story was originally published May 21, 2014 at 2:52 PM.