Beyond Words review – Balatro meets Scrabble

Since Balatro released two years ago, we’ve seen the format applied to different types of games. Dice games, coin pusher games, and now word games. Oh yes: Beyond Words is exactly Balatro crossed with Scrabble, and it’s bloody brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that I don’t want to play anything else.

Addictive in the best way possible, Beyond Words is all about laying words down on a board in order to score points. So far, so Scrabble. But since this is a single-player affair, you’re not competing against an opponent; you’re simply trying to rack up enough points to reach the goal. To begin with, it’s very much like the actual word-spelling board game. But as you progress through rounds, you’ll gain Balatro-like modifiers known as power cards, multiplying your scores in weird and wonderful ways.

The power cards you hold in your hand will make or break your success in Beyond Words, so you don’t necessarily need to be a Scrabble master in order to succeed here. Of course, having a rich vocabulary will help, at least in the early rounds: if you manage to clear your Scrabble tiles and spell out a seven-letter word, you’ll get a bonus for doing so. But some power cards favour shorter words, and so it’s entirely possible to beat the game without spelling anything more complex than “hello”.

Like Scrabble, scoring multiple words at once helps, too, like changing “sock” into “socks” by adding a new word perpendicularly, or laying a word parallel to another to also score some two-letter words at the same time. Each word scores in full, including any tile bonuses (perhaps they have a score multiplier on, or other additional bonuses) and your power cards will trigger individually for each word.

Related: The Best Word Games on PS4

Keeping things varied is a wide number of different boards to make your way through in Beyond Words. The boards have various power-up tiles, and come in different layouts: a ‘Bento Box’ board, for example, forces you to spell out smaller words to fit in a tight grid, and another already has tiles on the board that you need to utilise and work around. Certain boards provide you with a number of power cards as default, too, and will even change the set of letters given to you. Some may have fewer vowels, for instance, or more Zs and Js, just to make things tricky for you.

As fun as it is, though, Beyond Words is hard. Just like Balatro, the score you need to reach will ramp up very quickly between each round, and you’re soon going from a target of 500 points to 250,000 points and beyond. If you haven’t been lucky enough to get decent power cards available to you in the shop, you’re going to find yourself on the receiving end of a ‘game over’ screen long before you reach the final round.

Thankfully, the more you play of Beyond Words, the more power cards you’ll unlock, giving you access to more powerful perks. You’ll undoubtedly have your favourites, but it’s worth trying different combinations, because you might be surprised about what works.

It’s not going to be for everyone: a love of Scrabble and word games in general definitely helps. But this is a pairing I never expected to see, and one that works surprisingly well. Even when Beyond Words is kicking your butt, the gameplay here is so moreish that you can’t help but jump straight back in. Practice makes perfect, after all. I think the only downside is that a regular game of Scrabble is going to seem really boring in comparison now.

This review of Beyond Words is based on the PS5 version of the game, with a code provided by the publisher. It’s available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch and PC.