In this hectic world we live in, many times work and appointments must come before the fun and joys in our lives, including that of getting to play videogames whenever we want. Gone are the days when we could fire up a game of our choice and spend hours toiling away – now we seem to game in stolen moments here and there. With that in mind, perhaps it is no wonder that casual games have become such a popular gaming choice (especially with women who make up the vast majority of casual game players), as casual games allow us to either jump in and get those quick fixes of gaming bliss or either play them for as long as we want when we do have the time. In honor of the casual game, we'll be bringing you a new Casual Game of the Week every Monday to help you find that fix you might be needing in your life, and this week we have: Bookworm Adventures

As a writer, you have to have the knowledge to be able to understand words, look at their spellings, and be able to properly put them together into cohesive sentences so everyone can understand what you are saying. If you want to see someone who is truly a master of language, look no further than the writers of the world. With that said, I think even the greatest writers would have a hard time beating Bookworm Adventures, because if they are anything like me, they wouldn't be able to spell a simple five letter word to save their life.

The English language fascinates many a puzzle fan, as there are tons of search word games out there (where you spy hidden words and circle them), and games where you have to unscramble letters to make words. Heck, one of the most popular board games is Scrabble, which is all about taking lettered tiles you are given and making as many words as you can. In much the same vein comes Bookworm Adventures, which takes the classic word spelling Bookworm game and incorporates it into an RPG adventure – which works surprisingly better than you'd think.

In Bookworm Adventures you play Lex, a little green bookworm, who finds out from a professor that the story of a book is missing, and that a princess is in trouble. With a magic pen in hand, you are transported into the world of different books, and are forced to battle your way through them in order to right their wrongs. Many RPGs will have your characters using their fists, swords, guns, or any other number of weapons to do damage. Though Lex will bite and headbutt his way to being a hero, you won't be able to attack unless you know how to spell.

There is no world exploration, only an advancement from left to right, battling a handful of enemies in a row until you get to the boss; beat the boss and move on to the next level where you do the same thing again. In order to beat your enemies and move on, you have to use a tiled grid at the bottom of the screen to take its letters and make words. The tiles are all jumbled up, and not every letter in the alphabet is available at one time. By using these letters, you've got to put words together of at least three letters, though you can use all the letters on the board if you wanted and can actually make a word out of them (the game will only light the attack button up if you have indeed made a word that is real). Though the word "egg" might do a little damage, a longer word like "trinket" or "beyond" will reward you with more damage, because there are obviously more letters in those words.

To help you out, you'll level up throughout your adventure, giving you more health and making your attacks stronger in the process. Besides leveling up, you'll have the opportunity to win health potions, dispelling potions, and strengthening potions to boost you during fights. Each level will also give you a trinket as a reward, with you being able to carry three of them at a time into any level. The trinkets will do things such as allow you to take more damage, deal more damage, not get stunned by enemy attacks, or powering up words that contain the letters X, Y, or Z.

Admittedly the game is a bit gimmicky and easy to begin with, but then soon you find yourself losing your first game and needing to level up before you move on; it's at this point where the need to improve kicks in, and suddenly you have to be better. Where once you got through on nothing but a string of four letter words, suddenly you're taking longer in your actions, just so you can try to make a five letter word or one even longer (especially since five or more will produce jewels for you that you can use to heal yourself or poison your enemy). Also, making some truly long words will reward you with some very cool, zoomed in, slow-mo attacks.

Graphically I was quite impressed, because though the bottom section of the screen is pretty basic and consisting mostly of uninspired tile design that look just like letters on squares (though you can't really do much graphically with that to begin with), the upper portion is where Lex fights the baddies of the game, and the action here is incredibly well-animated, featuring plenty of head bobs and swiping animal paws. Beyond the excellent animation, I loved the character designs and the overtly cartoony way in which the characters came to life and popped off the screen with their bright colors. The audio of the attacks was pretty good, but this is definitely more a visual game than an audio one.

If you're a word puzzle fan, Bookworm Adventures is a must play, thanks to the fact that it ingeniously blends into the realm of a RPG perfectly. Even if you aren't generally a fan of word puzzle games, if you open up and give the game a chance, you just might come away mightily impressed. Whether you're an adult passing the time at work or trying to find a fun and educational game your child would want to play, Bookworm Adventures seems like a sure winner.

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