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The mobile market is flooded with word games, particularly since the advent of the popular “Words With Friends”. The scrabble theme game had many imitators released shortly thereafter trying duplicate its success. Shortly after, picture themed word games took over with limited success. All of these games had one thing in common however, and that was they were all based on preset concepts and photos given to you by the app publisher.

What if you controlled the content in word games? What if you were not limited to challenging people in your vicinity or game hub designated to you by your manufacturer? What if you could design challenges, hints , add effects and even determine how problems could be solved? What The Foto brings all of this to the table in what could be an Earth Shattering trend setting alternative which could make it become the mother of all picture word games.

How Its Done

What The Foto is a Facebook driven application.  An existing Facebook account is required in order to play. When you start up the app, you are required to sign into Facebook. If it is your first time playing, you will be taken through a tutorial which will explain the various modes, how to solve challenges, how to design challenges, and how to find people to challenge.

Like most picture word games, the premise is to figure out the word a picture is trying to convey. Panels cover the picture and can be removed one by one to further assist in guessing the word. Additionally, hints can be obtained to help speed up the process. Hints typically cost. As expected, hints come in the form of removing panels, revealing letters, or buying time.

Two main modes are offered. In “Open Games”, you can view any challenges that are available from other users. In “Battle Games”, you can create your own challenges for users to accept. If you open a game and solve a challenge, then you will be prompted to create your own in response.

Creating A Challenge

The most exciting part of What The Foto is the ability to design your own picture word challenges. Rather than being stuck with a bunch of publisher designed pic puzzles, What The Foto allows you to take a pic using your device’s camera and make that pic the challenge. After taking the picture, you will then be prompted to choose a filter to place over the pic (a la Instagram). You get the choice of six filters. From there, you choose the word for the challenge, add a hint and then confirm. Once this is done, your challenge is up for the taking.

Expand & Verdict

The fun does not stop there, in-app purchases give you access to more than a dozen new photo filters, panel collections, categories in several difficulty levels, gems and more goodies.

Though we were apprehensive about the app requiring Facebook to run, we understood how essential it was to the experience after going through the tutorial. This is probably the most exciting word game we’ve played to date because of all of the customization options. You are in complete control over the experience down to the finest detail. The fact that you design challenges means that the game will always be fresh. If your Facebook friend count is high enough, then the types of challenges you will receive will be completely unpredictable. The app receives high points for its easy to understand tutorial and sleek interface. What The Foto is one of the few apps which anticipated updates will come from its user base rather the developers - 5 Stars.

GMA