Dear Reader
Experience one of the top-rated 0 games on the App Store, Dear Reader! Developed by the innovative team at Local No. 12, LLC, this Puzzle game provides a unique gaming experience like no other. With a content rating of 12+, it’s perfect for a wide range of players. Since its initial release on 19th September 2019, the game has seen numerous updates, with the latest version launched on 12th July 2023.
Are you a fan of Puzzle, games? Then Dear Reader is right up your alley! You won’t be able to resist its appeal.
User Ratings of Dear Reader
Over 479 players have rated Dear Reader. Join them and share your thoughts!
How Much Does Dear Reader Cost?
Good news! You can download Dear Reader on your iOS device absolutely free!
Dear Reader Release Date
Eager to know when Dear Reader first graced the App Store? It was launched on 19th September 2019.
When Was Dear Reader Last Updated?
The latest version of Dear Reader was updated on 12th July 2023, ensuring a more enjoyable gaming experience for all players.
Where Can I Download Dear Reader?
To get started with Dear Reader, head over to the official Apple App Store.
A Glimpse into Dear Reader
“If I’m not actually reading in my down time then I’m likely playing Dear Reader.” -one of our dear players
Dear Reader lets you curl up and play your favorite books, turning classic literature into clever word puzzles. Unscramble passages from famous books, unlock unique puzzles, and add new books to your library.
Dear Reader includes over 100 literary classics and dozens of different word puzzles, from unscrambling anagrams to swapping lines of text. As far as we know, this is the first game where you can dive in and play with the actual written words from so many tempting books.
And it’s fun! As Game Developer’s Alissa McAloon wrote, Dear Reader is “a game that’s as difficult to put down as a good book.”
Best Apple Arcade Games, IGN
Top 5 Apple Arcade recommended games, Bustle Magazine
12 Best Apple Arcade games, Gamespot
10 Best Mobile Games of the Year, Paste Magazine
Official Finalist, IndieCade
Official Selection, Indie Megabooth GDC Showcase
Official Selection, Wordplay Festival
Best Gameplay Finalist, Games for Change
Best Meaningful Play, International Mobile Gaming Awards
What’s New in the Latest Update?
Find out what’s new in the latest version of Dear Reader updated on 12th July 2023:
Hello Dear Readers,
We continue to improve your experience with new bug fixes, difficulty balancing, typo editing, and other minor updates. Happy reading!
User Reviews on Dear Reader
Looking for more information? Read a comprehensive review of Dear Reader below:
We wish you could press and hold a word to see the definition. As a non-native speaker, we really miss this feature. Your app helps us learn English.
We wish the rare books can be less expensive.
We just started this game and picked a Hard book. Though its challenging we are having a lot of fun as well. We believe it will also help us with our own writing. One challenge for us is that, especially for poetry, we find we have to read it out loud in order to complete the stanzas correctly. Playing this in public should be hilarious.
We really love this game. Okay, yeah, for the most part you are just proofreading books. It is much more than that though. The books are abridged, which is fine for this game and works very well. We do find myself addictively playing because we want to know what happens in the next chapter. We found Dorian Gray much more interesting in Dear Reader because Lord Henrys pedantic diatribes were succinct, short, and to the point. We’ve done a few of the harder books and still found myself enjoying learning about things we didnt think we would find interesting. Im getting exposed to books we’ve always wanted to read but havent gotten around to, and we are learning new things. Fantastic! If you love reading, word games, writing, or anything else to do with words, you will probably enjoy this game. We really like that you can select your favorite types of Wordplay so you see them more often. We also like that you can drop down a speed/earning level for a more relaxing game or step it up for a super fast-paced game. The mid-level is challenging but not overwhelming. Developers: Please switch to a QWERTY layout instead of the silly A to Z format that you use, it takes too long to find a letter you know you need and you are penalized for not knowing where it is. We ALL text, most type, QWERTY would be an awesome improvement. Thank you for making this game!
So we’ve been working on this game for ages and let us just say this game was the best game ever!
The first time we downloaded the game, there was no tutorial so we thought it was just a book reading app. This time we tried it, the tutorial was okI wasnt thrilled with having a book chosen for us, but ok. Then today we decided to try the daily challenge. We guess the developers assume that everyone is a speed reader. We hadnt even gotten to the portion of the excerpt where the missing word belonged when the game took the word out and had us guess which one belongs there. We guessed correctly and had the same thing happen again. At that point we quit the game. Im donethis game is supposed to be about reading and comprehension, not seeing how fast you can get through a paragraph or guessing which words belong in the sentence.
Old dusty boring books, deleted.
When we get up at night and can not go back to sleep this is our game of choice the problem if the screen is always white!!!
We’ve been really enjoying this game when we want to work our brain/get a quick read in. We would absolutely LOVE to see one made for children with books like Corduroy, the Hatchet, and others. It really makes you slow down and understand what youre reading. Having worked in childrens schools for almost 5 years Ivan tell you they NEED these skills SO badly.
Dear Developers, we greatly enjoy your game (it’s our favorite in the Arcade, and we’ve spent many hours on it), except for this issue: Because you offer the Surprise Book Package for 10,000 Ink, we thought that this included the Rare Books, so we bought all of the regular bookstore books, planning to then use the Surprise Book Package to buy the Rare Books at 10,000 Ink each. It was an unpleasant surprise, then, to find that the Surprise Book Package only included the regular bookstore books (since there was no fine print that said so.) we know this is irrelevant to most of the players here, but we wanted to mention it here both to warn others who were planning the same buying strategy and to ask that you add fine print to the Surprise Book Package so that others aren’t similarly misled and disappointed. Also, please consider reducing the Rare Book prices. Since most of them are greatly abridged, the current prices seem unreasonably high for the amount of content. Thanks for reading and considering our suggestions. :) PS: Other than the above, we have no complaints – we love the variety and abundance of puzzles, literature, and goals in this game, and it’s almost worth the Arcade fee on its own.
It wont let us load a new book. It keeps loading P&P.
Doesnt save, sounds are annoying, music is annoying and the menu is unusable.
We dont really understand the choice to have a rotating shelf of books to buy with ink or why they are all so expensive. It feels somehow like a freemium game without the micro purchases. Something trying to overly encourage you to spend all your time at it. And theres really a long way to go to get any new books, especially if youre like us and playing timed mode makes it too stressful to enjoy so you get ink even slower. Im just sort of confused. It seems needlessly unrewarding and sort of discouraging how much ink everything is. We find myself playing less due to that discouraged feeling.
Considering that this is a game offered in the Apple Arcade, they really need to do a better job of having titles from people other than old dead white people freely available.
This is not your average word game. If you love reading and a challenge, give this a whirl. We adore reading, word and puzzle games and this has a bit of all three. It is not your average word game that you will tire of immediately and delete. We will also say, it can be maddening and addictive. We started out on the timed mode, but found it didnt work for our current reading mood. We find we enjoy different reads at different times/seasons based on what else is going on in our life. It is summer and we have many irons in the fire, making it harder for us to concentrate in short bursts of time. After we changed to relaxed mode, we were completely hooked and plan to switch back when our next reading mood kicks in. Switching playing modes is a real game changer, so just saying not to give up on it too soon. It may become your favorite game before you know it.
This game is awesome, period. No complaints about this game.
As someone who struggles with ADHD, and therefore actually sitting down to read a book for long periods of time, Dear Reader creates the perfect balance between user engagement and reading material. Its been about a week since we started playing, and we’ve already blasted through about five books; granted, most of the books you can purchase are abridged to make playing less tedious, but we’ve never found myself wondering where the plot went or missing out important information. It makes reading a lot easier to just sit down and do, and the puzzles force your brain to slow down, process the words, and further understand syntax and paragraph structure. Along with encouraging reading the classics, Dear Reader also provides you with links to the public domain Gutenberg Project, which allows anyone to read the full versions of these books for completely free and online. Though, we will say, our hunger for a certain book is usually completely satiated by the time we finish all the chapters and volumes. As the cherry on top, Dear Reader has a delightful soundtrack, satisfying sound effects, and very clean and eye-catching interface that sticks with you even after you close the app.
Of all the games on Apple Arcade this is the one we keep returning to. Charming. Challenging. Fun. Thanks!
We love this game, and it is the reason we currently keep paying for Apple Arcade. The puzzles are very fun and range from super easy to nigh impossible. We’ve enjoyed playing through old favorites and getting abridged storylines for classics we’ve never read. Anything we’ve found compelling, we’ve downloaded the full book from Gutenberg (link kindly given when you finish a book) and read the full version. Our biggest issue is the lack of new challenges and goals to keep you playing. Every day you are offered research which involves various goals like read a chapter in a book published in the 18th century, in a book with the authors name justified to the right, in a book with a place in the title, etc. We enjoy these but we can finish them in less than 1/2 hour and you only get 3 challlenges/day. There is also a set of 24 goals that give you access to rare books. We havent figured out what makes a book rare, but it is fun to have something to strive for. However we’ve finished 19 of the 24 goals, and the two we have available to us are Around the World Play for 80 days and Month of Dreaming Play at least one chapter a day for 30 days. These are both such boring goals and there is nothing we can do to speed them up. Around the World in particular is so annoying the only thing you have to do is do anything in the app daily for 80 days. Please make more goals and research available to keep our interest in the game. We would also love a random feature where you are given any random chapter with any random puzzle type, sort of like the Daily Challenge but something you can do an unlimited number of times for an unlimited number of random books/puzzles.
The woke virus has infected another app. New booooriiing books from Ukraine and some obscure nonsense, but alas, no books from Yemen or Eritrea or any of war ravaged zones around the globe. Gotta follow the mainstream narrative boys! Did you change your profile picture yet? Too notch.
We felt this game was fantastic at first, but as we’ve progressed and unlocked more of the "word plays," we’ve found that it can become extremely frustrating when certain books and chapters are paired with certain plays. A good example of this is the Emily Dickinson book and the Crossout wotd play. Dickinson’s writing is so idiosyncratic that almost any of the lines provided could have been real, making it frustrating to choose if you don’t already have prior knowledge of the individual poems. We would enjoy this game a lot more if it felt like more effort had been put into balancing each book with every play type. As it stands, it feels like the developers rely on having the puzzles be generated procedurally, but then don’t actually play test them.
We dont understand the point of this game. It spoils the continuity of the storyline and does nothing to improve comprehension. These books are in the public domain and available in electronic form for free, or through any public library. Either way, its a better learning experience than this.
Not a fan. The person playing should get more choice in what is read. Rearranging words in a work that you dislike is very off-putting as well as tedious.
We have never written a review, but this app warrants one. This game is so enthralling. We are a huge book worm, and love word games, and to have an app that combines the two on a beautiful and streamlined interface makes it worth paying the monthly subscription for Apple Arcade. We genuinely dont have a single complaint about the app. Its the one game that we consistently go back to on a regular basis. Thank you game devs for truly creating an app that isnt absolutely mind-numbing!
Isaw on AppleVis that this game had gotten some VoiceOver love. We resubscribed to Apple Arcade to try them out and so far, we have been able to complete 4 chapters on our own! You have addressed some of our initial accessibility concerns with version 2.20 and you have our appreciation and grattitude for that. There are still a few issues, such as text which is bolded is not being recognized as bold by VoiceOver. This has made the game play of taking out the lines which don’t belong a little challenging. We can get most of them independently, but we have had to ask our wife for help. Over all, we are very pleased with the accessibility progress which has been made so far. We look forward to continued enhancements in the future.
We really love the game, with one exception: several of the books make absolutely no sense in the way they are edited. They become a disjointed series of events without a clear plot and often without enough content to even fully understand several of the chapters. They are ok as excepts but are presented as an abridged /condensed version the story. For books we are already familiar with, the game chapters are sensible, but with the wide variety of content, there are many books we have not been exposed to and for many of the titles, it just isnt executed in a way that allows be to understand and enjoy the bite-sized content. :( that said, this isnt the case for all the titles, but it is for many of them.
We enjoy this game. We think it can be a little much sometimes though, especially for books you dont know. They have editor comments sometimes, but we’ve found them to be really sparse and unhelpful. For example, with Sleepy Hollow, there are only 2 editor comments, one about Irvings misogyny and the other about women not being a prize to be won. Neither are helpful or relevant to this abridged version. The editor comments could actually be helpful by giving occasional recaps, which would really help those unfamiliar with the type of vocabulary a book uses.
Really enjoy playing this, but our enjoyment is limited due to the fact that the app crashes if we try to purchase a book from the store in app, on every device we’ve tried. Limits game play as Im only able to purchase a featured book, and none of the catalog selection.
Id like the option for unabridged books. Its kinda meh when chopped up. We ended up downloading the real book from the library.
WHY CANT YOU MAKE YOUR OWN BOOKS? ADD THAT!
We love this game! We really do. However, every time we try to add a new book to our library, the game crashes. We would love to add one more star to this review, so please fix this.
We would recommend this game for anyone that appreciates classic novels and word games! The puzzles are fun and can be challenging though nothing too difficult and there are three modes of play that up the challenge you can switch between at any time. There are also, currently, over 100 books to collect without paying additional money!!!!! Our only issue is when we click on any title we get through the goals to buy, it crashes our game. This is on a 2020 iPad Pro that is regularly updated. Not game breaking at this time, personally, since we have plenty of other books to collect in the store before we run out. That being said, if that issue is fixed we would give this 5 stars (I really want the Dorian Grey book) None of the store books do this seem to have this issue. It is only the ones you unlock though the goals.
This game is really awesome. Even though we just started playing it about 2 days ago, Im already having an issue. We go to buy Utopia from the rare books, and it shuts down the app. Not gonna enjoy if we cant buy more books to play.
This game is a genre to its own. We’ve played word games, but never book games. This game accurately captures the joy of editing (Ive been a professional writer and editor) and combines it with the pleasure of reading. We appreciate that the default setting is very low-stress. The visual and audio design is fantastic, the soundtrack is perfect. Great bookshelf with well known giants and deep cuts. Absolutely a masterpiece.
This is our favorite Apple Arcade game. We’ve purchased every book that is available to us and gone through several of them a second time. We especially enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes story. We have over 135,000 points now and nothing new to read so Ill probably stop playing the game soon – until more books are added. But we just want to read this one book a second time, and then Thanks for giving us the opportunity to read so many books that we’ve always meant to read. And some of the ones we thought Id never want to read have turned out to be our favorites.
As an avid reader this is boring. 10 minutes and we deleted. Tapping words to fit into sentences. Maybe a good game for someone to introduce teens to books but not our style at all.
As an avid reader, this is such a good idea for a game. Its beautifully designed. Unfortunately there are little to no black authors or non-white authors for that matter, so we will be uninstalling. If you are going to make a game like this, why not try to be a little more diverse?
This looked interesting, its not. This takes classics and abridges them until any resemblance to the original books is superficial at best. The word puzzles involve basic grammar and sentence construction and a elementary school level of comprehension. When you read the description there is the implication of 100+ books to pick from, there isnt. You start off with a limited collection of free books and have to earn access to others. The app concept had potential, it fails.
Switching text around from public domain books doesnt seem like much of a puzzle. It is also not very interesting. May be useful for an ESL student, but for a native speaker it is just annoying.
We have played this game daily for over 18 months. After playing for several months on our iPhone 12, we decided to play it on our iPad 7. When we launched the game we were given a choice of our current game, played the day before or a months old game from the iPad. Of course we chose the current game. It then popped up with the same question but this time the dates on the iPhone and iPad saves were inverted. We chose the latest date and poof months of playing vanished as the old iPad game loaded. We raced to our iPhone and there wasnt even a choice, it just automatically loaded from the cloud the older version of the game. Now we cant even stand to look at your game icon. We doubt we will ever play the game again. Months of progress gone. There should have been the ability to have multiple local saves like so many other Arcade games to avoid these kinds of bugs. Arcade wants to build user loyalty with games that draw the user back day after day but they arent go to do that without backup failsafes for game data. Congratulations your data loss bug has led to us decide not to renew our Arcade subscription.
Because the challenges you are given while reading could make the book hard to understand, Id say pick a book youve read before, or one youve seen the movie adaptation of, or you know the premise, etc. This game is ad free and we have only had it for a few weeks, but we are honestly in love with it. Now Im reading a book every two days! This game is addictive and good for both kids and adults. Really good to encourage both reading and writing!
We love this game so much! This is the game that we are addicted to and cant stop playing! We have only been playing sense yesterday, but we have already done so much! There are different reading levels so you can take your time reading or go fast. You can get more books from the ink you get from playing! There are different types of things you can fix in the levels, so you do different things every time! There is so much thinking involved and it exercises the brain. Our fav part thought is that you can go back and read the levels you did! Love this game so much! Plz download it NOW!! WHAT R U WAITING FOR?????
This game is magnificent and is itself worth the Apple Arcade subscription. Its smart, fun, as challenging as you want it to be, and instantly addictive. Highly recommended for anyone who loves language or history or a wide variety of learning opportunities or any combination of those things.
We love this game (and its aesthetic) and it is really well done, but the only problem we have with it is how the books are edited. It makes sense to not post the whole book since some books are incredibly long, but we are finding that there are too many important pieces that are being left out. It happens quite often that consecutive chapters dont flow or make sense, which makes it hard to follow the plot of a story. Personally, Id rather have the full book so we could follow the plot, even if it takes longer. Or maybe book length could be a changeable setting so readers can toggle between full book or the abridged version as they please.
The game itself is fun, but suffers from some irritating bugs and usability issues. The most annoying is that it makes stupid sounds when its launched, even when all sounds and haptics are turned off in preferences. No, it dont want this app to make noise ever. Another irritant is that the research often forces guessing which books actually qualify. One example is when it asks you to choose based on the number of words on the cover of the book. The counts appear to be based actually on the number of words in the full title that you get when clicking on book details. Its also has some ambiguities, such as how many words to count 20,000 would in the Jules Verne classic. Yet another aggravating research criterion is whether or not the book has editorial comments. Theyre lame and no, we dont care or remember which books has them inflicted. Still another is that they added a feature that allows turning off certain challenges that we dont like, but it still includes those challenges in the mixed versions. The reason we dont like some of the challenges is that they make it difficult to read the words in the chapters so we effectively miss them when playing the game.
Be warned. Some texts contain offensive material including the n-word. The developer and/or Apple should remove this material.
This is by far the best game on our phone. We love all the challenges. There is a really great variety of books. We enjoy going back through some of our favorite books, as well as discovering some new ones. We only wish they would add new books more frequently, and perhaps add some different goals. We’ve nearly read every book they have to offer, and we’ve completed all the goals. We can always replay our favorites, but some new content would be amazing.
We have always been an avid reader and we love puzzles and word games. You know all of those classics you said youd read one day/used to say youd already read/forgot about? Theyre all here, waiting to meet you! Its like speed dating, but with books. We have fallen in love and read two books so far, and have a newfound fascination for Shakespeare. We really, truly, love this game. Its challenging. We get so frustrated sometimes, but in a way that makes us push myself. Im convinced that you cant finish a book on speed reader without losing any ink, but we havent tried. Im a page-turner for now. Our plan is to play the books a few times to prepare us for speed reader. This is also why we’ve started reading books only from this game we get to enjoy a classic AND potentially get a perfect score on each chapter. Is that cheating? Nah. Thank you for making a game for people like us. And for introducing us to so many poets that we never would have read before, and so many books that we assumed were boring. And for reminding us about Project Gutenberg! P.S. How do you get rare books? Will there be more goals added?