A few weeks back, Mattel launched a new version of the board game Scrabble, called Scrabble Together. While it’s far from the first new version of Scrabble ever made, it’s a super interesting idea. Scrabble Together arrives on the back of the traditional Scrabble board, and the concept is that it’s a cooperative affair. Players sit down with their own letter stacks but then work together. Each turn, everyone has to place a word on the board, but rather than using the numbers on the letters to build a score, the word must complete the conditions listed on at least one of the goal cards that’s currently in play. It’s the Scrabble equivalent of joining together in Monster Hunter to take down something massive.
Speaking of touchstones, these goal cards are very similar to the ongoing missions you get in a lot of mobile games. One card might ask you to play a word containing a tile worth 5 points. Another might ask you to play a six-letter word. You have three on the go at any one time, and they’re replaced when they’re completed. Complete 20 goals and you all win the game together. Fail a goal card – and fail after you’ve run out of one-shot helper cards, which do things like refresh the goal pile, allow players to trade tiles or make blanks – and you all lose the game together.
As has been widely reported, this has made some people a little angry. Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld apparently said that playing a game without scoring “is anti-human”, which is a fairly serious context in which to place a word game. Mattel, meanwhile, has said that Scrabble Together is for people who might find the original game intimidating. I think this is fair. And, actually, I think Scrabble Together has a very specific use that I’m extremely keen on.
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