Last updated on June 10th, 2023 at 04:55 pm
Paperback: The Game
Paperback: The Game is one of the best $3.99 to play game in the App Store.
Developed by Fowers Games Inc., Paperback: The Game is a Board game with a content rating of 4+.
It was released on 27th September 2016 with the latest update 31st August 2017
Whether you are a fan of Board, Card, games, you will find this game interesting and will absolutely like it.
Rating
122 people have rated 1.0.10
You can download the game Paperback: The Game from APP STORE.
Description
You are an author trying to finish kitschy paperback novels. Complete Westerns, Science Fiction, Romance or even a Crime Noir. Live the dream — and maybe pay the bills.
Word-building meets deck-building in the unique game Paperback. Players start with a deck of letter cards and wild cards. This is like their own bag of ‘scrabble’ tiles. With each hand of cards you make a word and score it. This score is how much money you have to purchase more cards for your deck. Collect cool letters with abilities, such as drawing more cards or double word score. Buy Novel cards to gain ‘fame’ points to win the game!
Here’s what people have said about the hit boardgame that is in it’s fifth print run:
"I’ve had this game for a month or two now and I honestly believe it to be one of the best games of the year." – HeirToPendragon
"It seems impossible that this game didn’t exist before 2014. So simple and so much fun to play!"
- Crystal Pisano
Features:
- Hotseat play with up to 4 players
- 3 levels of AI opponents
- Tons of cool card powers
- Classic pulp novel artwork
- Win with wordsmithing or power combos – up to you!
- Asynchronous multiplayer games with up to 4 players.
Updated on 31st August 2017
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
Fixed a crash while entering the multiplayer lobby on August 31
Fixed a rare crash on startup
Paperback: The Game Reviews
Online matches are a great new feature; it was getting a bit old playing against the AIs. The sign up process could be a little better, but totally worth it.
With the latest update our online games are crashing.
Love the game. Game play in the app is superb. Asynch games need. Badge notifications, which this game does not support for some reason. This is a BIG problem, but the game is so good we give it 4 stars still. We’ll update to 5 once badge support is added.
The interface is not the most intuitive, and the reminders aren’t great (e.g., no badges when it’s your turn), but the game itself is very fun.
Good game, but poorly explained and buggy — can be very frustrating.
This is hands-down a 5-star word game. We love the physical card game too. The advanced (smarter AI) does tend to use some very esoteric words, and that’s one thing we would tweak about the game, but otherwise it’s a great game for people who like word games. Another thing we wish could be added would be a "tap to define" feature, so that we didn’t have to write down the weird words and look them up later. We will say the one thing that’s a little weird is the handling of the common card pile… It’s presented differently, so that’s a little confusingespecially when playing this version before the physical card game.
We love this game, it’s a lot of fun to play around with the letters to find the best word, and the user interface is pretty simple and easy to use. We do wish there was a way to see the cards in our hand close up so we can read their abilities, especially because sometimes we will get duplicates of the same letter, but with different abilities. The main thing we struggle with is freezing and/or crashing. It might be because our phone is old (4s!). We never lose game progress when the game crashes or freezes, and it’s easily fixed by a simple closing and reopening of the app. Overall an awesome game!
This game is wonderful, and made all the better by online play with friends. The ONE THING the devs could do to improve the game is to make the score easily viewable. We have no idea what score our opponents have at any given point, so it’s hard to play strategically (especially at the end of the game). Is there not some straightforward way to display the scores?
We’re really enjoying Paperback but have one request: I’d like to be able to see our deck. This is especially needful when playing more than one game at a time. You might also let people know they can access their opponents’ score by tapping their star on the game board. At least most of the time–it’s a bit picky so sometimes it takes several tries to bring it up.
Even though it’s been selected, we aren’t receiving turn notifications which makes it hard to play multiplayer when you don’t know it’s your turn. Fun game otherwise. EDITED TO ADD: ok looks like some notifications seem to be happening now so thanks for that. We emailed a suggestion and never got acknowledgement but we’ll mention it here: your opponent score should be right there in the interface of gameplay. Yes there’s a log but we don’t want to have to continually access it that way. It should be right there next to our own score when we’re taking our turn. Seems like a no-brainer idea yet…
8/21/17 Update – Can’t get ahold of developer to address inability to create account for online play. ———- So, they fixed the "crash on launch" issue! Yea! Now, we are unable to register for online play – which is the main reason we wanted this game. The registration process in the app seems to work OK, but you never get the email you need to verify your email address. You cannot log in within the app until you get this email. Keeping our review at 1 star until this game functions as advertised.
- Password setting/reset system for online play accepts passwords that the app itself can’t handle (blocking access without explanation). Restrict your password to letters only (that’s what worked for us, anyway). 2. Game intermittently fails to grant card bonuses. 3. "Support" address is a black hole. It took them a week to acknowledge our request, and we received no support for more than two weeks (at which time we finally figured out their password bug myself). 4. The gameplay instructions in the app are pointlessly incomplete. It is essential to find a copy of the physical game instructions online if you want to understand what is going on.
We can’t play the game since the update. It changes orientation and then closes. We have tried deleting and reloading it. Any suggestions? One of our fave games and we want to be able to play!
We are having the same problem with not receiving turn notifications. We were so excited for online play, but the implementation has been really frustrating.
Our husband and we love this game, so we waited to see if a fix would be promised on the website. Nope. The game crashes immediately on opening on the latest version of iOS.
Just downloaded. Crashed upon opening. Hard reset phone, tried again, and still crashes. Hopefully this is addressed ASAP. Seems we’re not the only one.
The game concept is top notch. It’s highly addicting, challenging, and fun. That being said, there are a couple of suggestions that would enhance game play. First, find a way to increase the font size on the cards without having to zoom in every time. Second, update the dictionaries. Third, make the AIs more intuitive. For instance, if drawing a book card would end the game, a human wouldn’t draw that card if they wouldn’t win the game. The AIs will draw the card and end the game, even if it meant their loss. All in all, phenomenal game. Highly recommend!
We own both the actual board game and the iOS game, and they’re BOTH amazing! Hoping that future updates have Bluetooth or wireless multiplayer. Pass and play is fun, though! So awesome to see a game port so perfectly as this one with its artwork, theme, and unique gameplay! Our wife hates word games, but she loves this one! Exciting to see the author working on a prequel to this game!
A quick, light word building game. It was easy for us to pick up and play- no long winded tutorials here. We had no issues with freezing or the app crashing. Gameplay is great and with your letter deck being different in each game, it is always keeping us on our toes. Very enjoyable!
Currently our favorite game. Love it! Thanks for expanding our vocabulary. Suggestions: Ability to play over wifi/web… Maybe Facebook integration. A log of past games and scores. Stats like longest word, highest scoring word, and AI win/loss ratio. A paperback cover gallery. More covers.
Was crashing but updated iOS and reinstalled the game seemed to fix it.
This is a great adaptation of an admittedly simple game that has lasting appeal. Hopefully there could one day be a online multiplayer option.
We have the card game and love. The app works great although some of the UI is a bit small on our iPhone 5. The AI is a nice challenge on medium. All in all a hit for us.
We always enjoy playing this game to pass the time and revisit it constantly. Like many other here we can’t wait for updates to the dictionary, AI or possibly an online multiplayer.
We really enjoy this game. Yes, we have some quibbles about the dictionary used by the AI, but we’re otherwise pretty happy with it. We would, however, really enjoy a way to play the co-op variant for two players on the app. It’s our preferred way to play the game, and bodging together a workaround with pass and play is a little awkward.
We were just browsing in the App Store and found this great game. Our family really enjoys deck-building games (Dominion, DCDBG) and word games (Text Twist, Quiddler), so this is a great marriage of the two. Within 48 hours of us buying the game for our phone, it was also downloaded to the iPad for our middle-grade kids, to our husband’s Android phone. We just got the physical game in the mail. We don’t have the issues with the AI getting lucky cards, and we didn’t notice how it is making less than strategic choices. However, the dictionary is a little wacky, as others have written. The AI played "arrrghh" and "altho" and a few other words that are not real. We were also annoyed with a racial slur that it played ("jewing"), and a coworker said the AI got away with a different slur/curse word, but we never heard from her what it was. With a new dictionary, we would rate this a five-star game.
We loved the physical version of this game, so we got the app. It’s great, the AI is okay (the smartest level is a good challenge). Our only issue is that we don’t understand why it is so picky with our words when the AI words are all over the place (mostly reasonable, but slightly unfair). We look forward to improvements and updates.
Great fun, very addictive but we’re involved in a game right now and it won’t accept the words "mulched" or "remulch". What’s with that! We have experienced this sort of problem more than once. Also the computer seems a bit biased towards the AIs. Still in all it’s a great game.
Good game, but some of us need a bigger or more clear font on a small screen like iPhone 5. Yeah we could upgrade but…
We purchased paperback on a whim and am thrilled with the purchase. It’s music art and gameplay are truly wonderful. BIG caveat though is the apps "card shuffling" abilities. Often we’ll get hands with all the big point cards (2 letter cards etc) lumped together then all the wilds in the next hand with a couple low point cards thrown in. All the 2 letter cards/big point cards lumped together means you have to throw out a bunch of big point cards to make a word and then get stick with low point cards to follow up. Please fix that asap for more balanced gameplay.
This game is fun, entertaining, and engaging. We’ve played against others but usually spend some downtime playing against the Smarter AI. Although the AI can come up with some outlandish words, the frustration for us arises when the AI gets two or three starting rounds with letters while the Player keeps receiving Wilds. Within those rounds, then, the Player only can obtain small value cards while the AI is gaining four or five point cards. In following rounds, the AI is then able to amass huge "cent" scores and raise their star level quickly. The Player, contrastingly, is finally able to gain some larger "cent" cards but is already 20-30 points behind. If the wilds could be more fairly acquired between both player and AI in the first few rounds, then game would be more equally competitive throughout. It really is a great game and we enjoy playing, but we would enjoy a more realistic opponent.
We agree is is very entertaining but can be very frustrating when you enter a word you know, and can google, is legitimate but it prohibits (like, say, "Stilton" – a cheese) and yet it pulls words out of who knows where (one was a form of music from the latter half of the 13th century, or a Latin word for a particular piece of clothing). A better dictionary would push this game up to the top. Here’s two more: "solids" The definition of a sloid is another spelling for slojd, the educational system based on making crafts, created in Finland by Uno Cygnaeus in 1865. An example of sloid is a required woodworking class in Swedish schools. And "dacoity" Dacoity is a term used for "banditry" in Bengali, Odiya, Hindi, Kannada and Urdu. The spelling is the anglicized version of the Hindustani word and as a colloquial Indian English word with this meaning, it appears in the Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases (1903). … Really?
The game is a definite keeper. We have played it over all over again. It is our favorite word game. The one improvement we would suggest is to work on the A.I. When we play the game we select three A.I. Opponents. We set the intelligence level to all be at the highest level (smarter AI). Our complaint is that they do not play as a person would. In other words if they have no chance of winning they will still select to buy one of the fame cards that will trigger the end of the game. A human would not do that. He or she would bypass that option in the hope of being able to buy a more expensive fame card in the next hand. In other words, the smarter A.I. Could be strategically smarter instead of just having a larger vocabulary. If that were done then the game would be a solid five stars.
This game would be more fun if the dictionary governing the words were mire accurate. First, if you play against a computer entity (AI) , the game allows some pretty arcane words. We are okay with that. Hey, we can always learn something and do look up the words we do not recognize. But some of the words it allows clearly do not exist. But secondly, it does NOT allow blog or statin or other words it should. That aside, the game is fun. If there were more letter choices the fun would improve but all in all, a good game. But…… Please tell us what the word LBRISTO means????????
Recently received our hard copy of paperback. It’s great on a big table with multiple players. This app is great for one or two players for quick play with no set up or for a single player. The sound/music has a volume issue and it would be nice to have a ‘skip turn’ or FF button for games against the computer/multiple computer players. Music is great, and the color/looks match the actual card game and it looks good on iOS.
Very fun game, but when we have all the perfect letters for a word that most Americans use at least once a day (F*****s), but the game tells us it’s not a word, we feel like we’re playing with a nun whose archaic sensibilities we need to cater to.
We enjoy this game. However, it doesn’t recognize many words. It’s a good game, but they need to update their list of accepted words.
Great game, but it definitely has some bugs that need fixing. We’ve had games that when we return to continue the cards stack funny and some of them aren’t usable even though they appear in our hand. We’ve also had games end early because the number of game cards we had wasn’t tracked correctly (their was supposed to be 8 cards and the game ended after only 2 of the 8 were purchased). Love the game, but we’re a little disappointed in the weird quirks we keep finding. Don’t people test this stuff before release?
This is a fun game and definitely improved our skill at words with friends. It’s addictive but the ai gets predictable. Would love an option to play our friends online in the future.
The good: this is a fun game that has grown on us as we’ve played. There’s a good mix of strategy, knowledge, and luck required to win. The bad: The game has been freezing a lot lately. When it works, it won’t allow us to listen to audio from a separate app while we play (but it has in the past). Legitimate, correctly spelled words are sometimes rejected for no apparent reason while the AI plays really uncommon words. Perhaps the dictionary should be expanded with a focus on words that human players know.
A fun quick deck building game that will make you plan ahead (lower points now or higher points later). However, at higher AI levels be prepared for the game balance to favor the AI. (i.e. The game rejected our use of Barista as a word, but accepted the AI’s use of Yttrias).
We liked the app until now but it is currently crashing on start.
The app crashed after our first game, but aside from that the user interface is old school (really, we’re "player 1," and we can’t see the AI’s score except on its turn?). The home screen looks like it has unpaid-for ads. All-in-all, we regret having paid money for an app this low in quality.
We wish we never would have bought this game. It’s not hard or amusing. You get one or two tiles with actual letters on them and the rest are wilds, there are so many wilds that you are presented with a multitude of different words that would fit each turn, hardly any thinking necessary. A tutorial would have also been nice, for all we know we’re just playing it wrong or missing something…
This game is AWFUL it doesn’t let you come up with your own words you basically just sit and watch words be made the entire time. Do not waste your money, it’ll lead you to believe you get to form your own words when this is not the case!! We demand our money back. False advertising!
No matter what we select this game plays itself automatically and we never get to do anything . We’re bored to death with it.
This is a good version of the awesome Paperback card game Everything works as expected and the game play is perfect. The only thing missing is the "attack cards", which would be great at least as an option to use in settings and it’s missing the "2 word" and "reverse of a 2 letter card" in the common cards which, in our opinion helps to add more variety to the game play. Either way we’re glad that this game was developed for the App Store.
(Revised review) Really fun and simple to play, both pass-and-play and against AI. We were happy to see quick bug fixes from the previous release.
At first it seems fun. But the rules are not clearly explained and soon the ai is raking in coins and stars and buying the book cards when you’re still barely affording the cheapest. You make a word with say 7 star points total and it says you cannot afford the 7 star card??? There’s not clear instructions. Please update!
Please give us online multiplayer!!!! I’d love to play this with our wife!