Kind of like Brain Age, but for learning words. A most likely sleeper game that a lot of people should try anyway.
The game starts out with you choosing your "coach" with is really one of 4 virtual characters that says something to you after you complete a game and are are getting back to the main menu. Like saying "That was an impeccable performance. At this rate"....yadda yadda etc. Eventually you'll run into the same things they say after doing a game and you'll just want to click A to skip them. The virtual character you choose to "coach" you only seems to play a video based on the results of the game, for instance if you played the game in a rush, the computer as a result would automatically has the coach say "You should try going slower next time". So sometimes you'll go "duh, you don't need to tell me". So it's interesting to have this virtual coach and it makes the game fun, but after about 4 days you'll already know what they're gonna say.
The gameplay itself is based on the 6 total games (3 or 4 which you unlock) that get you to increase your vocabulary. Each game can also be played in multiplayer, although I haven't had anyone to play against so I can't really judge that part. Each has 3 difficulty settings, being easy, medium, and hard. The medium and hard difficulties are unlocked, so you'll be forced to plow though the easy mode with so many easy words just about everyone already knows...Though one of them seems to just better you spelling of the words rather than learning them....Anyway, one game has you match the definitions with the words at the right of the screen, another has you unscramble the letters to match the words of the definition you're given, another has you turn a knob to spell out the word of the definition, and you've against a computer. The rest or all of them can be seem in the screenshots and they're really straightforward. After each game, it gives you a a score with how well you did and a bar is filled up gradually saying how many of the words for the day you've mastered and/or have left. Right after that screen it goes to a straight up list of the words in the exercise and their definitions. It's a pretty easy game to explain and you can figure it out in a flash by watching a gameplay video on Youtube for various other sites...
On the plus side of the whole game, it gives you a definition of each word. That helps, but again, there are a few vital things missing: they don't tell you the way to pronounce each word, so you'll have to go on the internet or ask someone to figure that out.....and a lot of the definitions are vague and seem to just leave you blank on what the words mean. Some of them don't seem to say what the words mean for words you already know....and lastly the game is chock-full of easy words just about everyone on the planet already knows. So in a lot of the exercises you'll be constantly going "No duh! I knew that when I was born!". For example they had "started" (yes you heard me right), hamburger, vegetable, airplane, microscope....and a whole bunch of words leaving you wondering what the hell the developers were thinking, like "Jeez, you think we didn't know that?". So it's basically left with you playing the hard mode of medium difficulties to actually have some words you don't know. Even then some of the easy words seem to get thrown in mysteriously. I guess all the easy words are in there for the little tykes, but they seriously should have given you an option to filter out all the easy words.....I forgot to mention, but some of the definitions just suck, so for elevation it said something like "the length up the side of a building", when we know you can use the word for the hight of anything in general....I can't remember much more at the moment but you get the idea. This uncertainly of the definitions is where it hits the game hard. You'll be tempted to pull out a dictionary or ask someone to verify if the definition is right. You'll be left kind of suspicious of what they're teaching you because of the vague definitions alone, so that was kind of annoying......And FINALLY, the game doesn't have anything where they use the words in example sentences --a big blow to the game. So you have to picture in your mind what the words means and it's context entirely by the definition..But I don't know, you can't really blame them because then they'd have to come up with a sentence for EVERY word.
I may have made the game sound bad by the last paragraph but it's still a game well worth playing. I had fun learning a ton of new words. But I must tell you, since there are so many words in the English language, it will probably take a few weeks until you start seeing real progress in your daily life....And yes it feels good. You'll stumble less while reading and you'll go "what does that word mean" less. Never have I seen any game that attempt to teach you new words while still being fun. You gotta give this game credit for doing that. I'd but it once it becomes a little cheaper and you should too. Or at least give it a try.