I've loved this game for decades and fondly remember playing Upwords with my grandmother on a weekly basis while watching The Price is Right as a young child. Unsurprisingly, the gameplay is just as I remember. I see it as a faster and simpler version of Scrabble. I find the games much quicker since you can drop just a tile or two on the board during a turn and still score plenty of points. I remember the older version I played was HEAVY ON THE BROWN. The board, the box, the tile holders--all brown. While it wasn't the prettiest game, especially by modern standards, it's stamped in my mind. My girlfriend and I have been on a board game kick during this pandemic, and I mentioned Upwords to her, and to my surprise, she never heard of it. I frequently saw vintage versions at thrift stores which I was tempted to get. but I was always concerned about missing pieces. So screw the flowers and chocolate, I got her this for Valentine's Day. The box certainly has changed its look, but I kinda liked it. If you never heard of it, the overall redesign makes it look like a fresh, modern game that was released in the past few years. But once I opened the box, I was immediately a bit disappointed by the fit and finish of everything. Instead of a full framed border on the tiles that would make them stack neatly and securely on top of one another--as the older version had--these new tiles have a little dot/pip on each corner with small indentations on the underside of each tile for them to sit in. Be prepared to spend some time trying to get these to sit flush and time restacking them after knocking them over to see what letters were played underneath a stack. It is a poor, cheap tile stacking solution. The face of the tiles are poorly stamped, with each letter having awful wavy lines and curves--plus the letters themselves have poor centering tolerances, making them looking terribly misaligned when on your tile holder. And what's up with this cheap aqua bag to hold/store your tiles? I believe they want to you spread the tiles out face-down when playing, but I've always drawn them straight from the bag while replacing letters during play. I can't see this bag lasting more than a few games as it reminds me of the pouches used for Uncle Ben's microwavable rice. Couldn't we get something made of inexpensive fabric, felt, or burlap with a drawstring? The rotating board is a nice touch as I believe my old Upwords never featured that. Like everything else, it's not smooth and feels cheap, but it works and gets the job done. Overall I still love the game, but this edition feels like corners were cut during every part of manufacturing. If you're interested, I would honestly look for an older version on sale with a more sturdy design--as I mentioned, they're always available at my local second-hand stores. And if you find that it's missing tiles, a quick search yielded me dozens of results for replacements--and it would still be much cheaper than getting this new version.
