I don’t know if my online pay-to-play game will be the one that breaks the barrier down for the casual gamer but I’m willing to give it a try.

Check out the online version of a brand new word game from Technical Machine Jargon Productions, Inc. called Five Letter Draw. The game is located at fiveletterdraw.com and is a new pay-to-play online game which can be played alone or against up to five other people.

Five Letter Draw (5LD for short) started out as a shareware game in 2001 and achieved over 600 downloads. It then found life sporadically in sales as a PC game on CD-ROM in some stores throughout the 2000s. Now comes the online version.

It’s a twist on word search puzzles in that it is a word game with card game aesthetics and, unlike the normal word search puzzle in newspapers and puzzle books, does not give you a list of words to find and circle.

In this version, you have to form five-letter words with adjacent letters. They don’t have to be in a straight line, nor do they have to be in order. But they do have to be connected. Sounds easy but is more challenging than it sounds.

The site shows a demo on the homepage to show how words would be formed. You can play a demo game for free, or you can register with a username and password for 1 week of full access for free. After that week is up, at any time you can renew for $5.00 for a full month unlimited. Charges are not recurring.

Start a new game, join an existing game, chat/text message with others logged in - plus, the game has competitive scoring. Check it out - http://fiveletterdraw.com

As far as I’m aware, Zuma’s format had never been used before.

Its well known that Zuma is based on an arcade game named Puzzloop…

I am Karin, very interesting article that contained the information I was searching for in Google, thanks….

I just have to say, that I love that you said this:

What follows then, is that as game developers, we need to be designing our games for groups of people with common interests.

[...]

If we do this successfully, the individual will never realise that they’ve ever been categorised in the first place. They just love the game and we know we’re giving players what they want.

I would die happy if I saw the majority of game companies adopt this policy.

Is there really that much attention? Or were you generalising to make a point?

3RD sense is a casual gaming and advergaming company based in London, UK, and Sydney, Australia. 3RD……

Firstly thanks for the feedback. I think your comments are pretty fair too. However, this is a brand new blog and I’d really like you to give it some time. The objective is to provide a good, wide, casual game blog, with lots of levels. It’s really not about self promotion, but it does kind of have to start that way to put it in context.

I take on board what you say about Playaholics too, that site is long over due for a complete overhaul. All I can say on this, is watch this space. A brand new and very sparkly Playaholics will be up in the next 6 weeks.

I’m also very happy for you to recommend other sites/games/casual stuff too. Tell us who you think we should be recommending and why….