Last updated on January 4th, 2026 at 05:23 pm
Qwirkle – Board Game Review
Qwirkle is a Board game from MINDWARE CORPORATION, first launched in 7th February 2014.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 1,479+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Qwirkle Stand Out
Challenging and thoroughly addictive! Now you can play the original award winning board game Qwirkle on your iPad and iPhone!
Qwirkle is MindWare's best-selling board game, with over 7 million copies sold worldwide. Through the years, Qwirkle has received numerous awards including Mensa, Parents' Choice, Major Fun and the Spiel des Jahres, Germany's coveted Game of the Year award.
FEATURES:
-
Solo, Online, and Pass and Play modes all support up to 4 players.
-
4 levels of difficulty, from easy to expert.
-
Includes Achievements and Leaderboards through Game Center.
-
Customize your experience – choose your favorite background to play on.
-
Play with classic Qwirkle colors or personalize your tiles with custom colors.
-
Exciting animations and playful music enhance the Qwirkle experience!
-
Tutorial and Help sections get you playing fast and easy!
WHO WILL YOU PLAY?
-
Play solo against 4 levels of robot, from easy to expert.
-
For family game night, use Pass and Play mode to play together on a single device.
-
Challenge your friends to play online through Game Center.
-
Find new online opponents through auto-match in Game Center.
Find out more about Qwirkle on the MindWare website:
https://www.mindware.orientaltrading.com/qwirkle-a2-32016.fltr
Want to share your thoughts on the digital version of Qwirkle directly with the developers? Email us at [email protected] with your comments! We'd love to have your input about what you like and ideas for improvements. We look forward to your feedback!
Happy Qwirkling!
This Board game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Qwirkle is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 1st October 2024
Recent improvements include:
- Resolution fix for non-English native iOS settings on some iPhone models
- Added support for iPhone 16
- Bug fixes and improvements
Download & Availability
Qwirkle is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
This is fun we like playing it a lot and it makes us happy and we love it too but we also like it more when you play it with friends.
Such a fun family game and we also love playing other players online. The app makes it really easy to play.
We like this game it fun we play it a lot with our family but since im addicted to pink maybe you could add some cute pink and purple backgrounds for the girls.
Qwirkle is a joy that our whole family plays on a daily basis. It had stopped working for at least a couple of years. Glad we tried it on a lark earlier this year. It works just as the real game does. Thanks MindWare.
BEST GAME YOU SHOULD PLAY AND ITS VERY FUN.
We like Qwirkle because it makes us think and use our brain.
We were introduced to the board game by friends. We enjoyed it so much we went out and bought the board game the next day. We have introduced it to our children and grandchildren. After playing the board game we discovered it as an on line game giving us the opportunity to play with our children and grandchildren that live a distance away. Love the game.
We love the game. We are sad that the feature to play with friends.
Just like the real thing. And we believe our game will improve when we play the board game again. Watch out.
The continuing upgrade and software fixes solved some glitches with online games. A much improved experience to engage and play with family online.
It is a great way to sit and enjoy a relaxing game and you can get someone else to play with you for free! We love playing Qwirkle after a long day of work and winning against the robot and friends.
Qwirkle is a classic, and this game brings all of the fun online so that you can play with friends anywhere! We love it! We had some problems getting going, but their customer support (Tim) was top notch lending a hand multiple times on a Sunday to help fix an issue on the Apple side of things not even caused by their game. Very happy with our purchase. Thank you.
We can initiate online games again– yay!! This is a great game and so glad it's working properly now. Our only criticism: at the end of the game, if we lose, we find it frustrating not to be shown the last moves made by the other players. We'd also like to still be able to see the last tiles we have left on our rack.
Our friend and we really love this game. However, we both travel in RVs and arent around each other much. We tried to play this online, but we are having issues. We sent her a friend request, but she cant accept for some reason. We hope they can fix this.
Cannot seem to end a game that the other player has abandoned and so the game just sits in our cue despite our pressing the end game option- repeatedly. So annoying.
We love this app, but when the game ends the opponents last play should be displayed as an option to see.
We enjoy playing this game, but recently we have experienced an unstable game that doesnt load at times. We also find it disturbing that we cannot start a new game with other players. Your online will not allow us to start new games with new players. We will keep playing but will have to quit when our present players have completed their game.
Enjoying the local, but can't play against our friend.
We enjoy playing this game on our phonethe tiles stay put!! The difference between easy robot & hard robot is that you get worse tiles, including lots of duplicates, while the robot seems to get a better selection.
Scoring problems: 1) Sometimes you dont get a score for all tiles that you put down and that connect to other tiles. 2) Even if the score is correct for all tiles, you dont always get the full amount added to your score. The scoring is fast enough to miss this happening. 3) You dont get credit for a Qwirkle ( 12 points) plus the additional points for your tiles you added to other tiles . 4) You dont get credit for a double Qwirkle which is 24 points. In addition, we noticed that after we won several games, the first tiles drawn for 5 or 6 turns of our next hands are loaded with duplicate tiles and colors. The robot doesnt like to lose! What a ridiculous programming strategy.
We feel like the robot intentionally messed up the established patterns so you dont make as many qwirkles and its super frustrating.
We're so happy that you have finally updated this app in 2024! But there is a new glitch that needs fixing- occasionally when you resign from a game, (for example because the other player no longer makes moves) the game remains and you cannot delete it in any way, so you have to keep seeing it in your list of current games even though the game is long ended. If you fix this glitch, then we'd give five stars. But a big Thank You for the 2024 updates.
Even if you only play up to 4 tiles in a string the Expert will get the 2 needed tiles within a turn or two. We have only ever beat it once and not because of our gameplay. Simply because the Expert is stacked to get the tiles it needs. It seems like way more than random luck! Maybe make it a little more realistic so a human wins say 10% of the time.
We miss the achievement announcements.
The latest update fixed the glitches, which is fantastic as we had deleted the game due to it being so frustrating. Now we would just love to see a chat feature.
Love playing with our family but the lack of notifications is a hassle. We wish it would let us know when its our turn and not have to depend of a text from our opponent. Did find what should have been a legal play the other day but it wouldnt let us play it. It was a sneaky move, sliding it in between others though.
We like the game but dont like having to open the app to see if opponent has made their move yet.
Like the game but cant play with friends. Weve gone through all the settings and everything shows we can but its not giving us the option.
We bought this two nights ago after learning about it, and they've executed the overall experience of the original tabletop game well. We like that there are options to play both online against friends and other randomly matched players, and local games with friends and/or robot opponents, the latter of which is great for essentially playing a 1-player game and lending a sense of practice. (Fun-but-not-necessary suggestions that we're sure the developers have already heard a lot: It would be greater if there were an Android counterpart to widen a cross-platform opponent poolboth for friends and randomized matches who do not have iOS devices. We understand this might be difficult, though, if the player matching architecture, etc, is too heavily built around Apple's Game Center service. But it would at least be just generally a nice option if games with friends online could also include robot opponents.) our only major gripes so far are 1) If you try to setup a game with more online players than are apparently available, you're left with empty "Pending" slots, seemingly in perpetuity. We tried setting up a 4-player game with three random opponents, and then a game with a friend and two random opponents, and both times, it only added the same single random opponent and two and one "Pending" slots respectively. Unfortunately, that means once the turn order hits these Pending spots, the game is completely stalled. There should effectively be a system in place that downshifts the game mode from 4-player to 3- or 2-player, removing an empty/Pending player slot after a preset amount of time in which other players can't be found to fill the slot(s), so the game can continue with the amount of players already present. And 2) Maybe it's a bug, but we tried to resign from that first game with the two Pending slots, and now that seems to just be stuck on our open games list labeled "Pending", even though clicking on it still shows it's ended. Why can't we close it/delete it from the list? Clicking the "End Game" button doesn't seem to do anything, but we don't get a red X button option on the list like we do for games that are properly ended and labeled "Game Over".
Qwirkle is a favorite among our family and ourselves. For $2.99 this app is very glitchy and laggy. We would expect better from an app that charges money.
Glitchy app and Im not able to play online with our friend. Does. It keep up with iPhone software updates.
The game looses connection during online games and both players are waiting for the other to make a move. We hope they fix it soon.
Our friend and we want to play each other online and the online playing portion isnt working.
This game is fun. We love playing it with friends and family that are in different locations. However it does not notify you when its your turn. Unless we check the app- weeks can go by without knowing its our turn.
Super clunky interface and hard to find friends initially and see invitations. Also froze mid game and had to close out to get it to work.
Its too difficult to start a game with friends. Invitations should be easier. Also, we preferred the animations used previously. Otherwise, we love the game.
Been enjoying app for years. Today all of our ongoing online games disappeared. Also, we are unable to start any new online games.
Playing local against the machine works fine. Playing online game is not functioning and according to all the comments on YouTube help videos, there is no fix. $2.99 waste of money if we can no play with friends.
We played this game at easy, average and hard levels but suddenly all we have is easy. We used to tap on the line below our name and the difficulty level changed. Now-nope, just adds players. Searches say to choose solo play option but we dont see that anywhere. The settings should allow you to pick solo or other choices plus level of difficulty but we dont see that anywhere in settings. We enjoyed this game a lot until it quit letting us choose difficulty.
Predictable. Not true luck of the game. Rigged. Orchestrated. Boring. Not like the real game.
It used to be so easy to invite friends to play. What happened? We cant figure it out anymore. And, there isnt a place to look it up. So disappointed.
You cant play with a friend at all! That was the reason we bought the app! Please care about your app, fix and update it.
Very slow between turns during online play.
Game play is not like the instructions for the physical tile game. Create a settings that you can turn off and on types of play example. Scoring in multiple directions/ placing tiles in different lines, placing tiles in different rows. Blocking rows after the first Qwirkle is formed or the second or third. Makes the game play different and multiple Qwirkle form easily. Optional 7 and 8 or nine tiles depending on 2 players. Creating a board option with minus points on it. Turning on and off features can make the game more personal and versiTILE for us that like to play a lot. These are things we do when we physically play the tile game. Thanks.
It is extremely difficult to get an online game started with a friend.
When playing with friends on iPads, games need to be reset several times. Very frustrating.
Since the last update it is difficult to get the game to open up- often! We play with friends and frequently have to try 4-6 times to get our online game to open. Love Qwirkle, but fix your app.
Ive loved playing Qwirkle for about two years, but just recently found the App. Ive learned a lot of new strategies playing the robots. Its a great game with friends or with robots. Really good for our concentration! Yep, we recommend this game.
This app is great. They finally made an update.
We were having an issue with being able to play with friends. We reached out to game developers and they told us what to doand it worked! Naturally it boiled down to user error (us). Love the board game so we thought Id try the app version. Playing with the robot drives us a little crazy because he blocks almost every move we want to make. We guess we need to learn to play better.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 3.0.3
- Size: 179.14 MB
- iOS: 14.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: MINDWARE CORPORATION
Last updated: 1st October 2024 | Genre: Board | Developer: MINDWARE CORPORATION