Impress

Impress works on an ink reservoir. The board lines up beige letter tiles, and under each letter runs a row of dots: that is the ink, the number of uses it has left. At the top, a row of empty boxes awaits the headline, that hidden word that uses every letter on the board, and it is the only word that closes the round and collects the bonus shown just below. Between the two are a points score, the day's game number, and a rule tag such as Gems, which warns that the board hides two long words that pay better. Each word played spends the ink of the letters it uses, and the help text is explicit: exhausting a letter needed for the headline ends the round.

1. Form a word of at least four letters, either by typing or by tapping the tiles, then confirm with Press.
2. Watch the ink drop: the numbers under each letter tell how many uses remain.
3. Grow the headline bonus word by word, knowing that it will eventually cap out.
4. Tap the board's rule tag (Gems, Vowels or another) to see what it changes that day.
5. Write the headline before you run dry: it is the headline alone that earns the bonus and ends the round.

Impress's neat idea is that scoring points and winning are two actions that draw from the same reservoir. Each word played fattens the bonus and moves it toward its cap, but consumes the ink the headline will need, so the greedy player can become rich and unable to collect. This dilemma fits into a row of dots under each tile (no meter, no timer, no countdown), and it is enough to give the game a real tension curve. The typographic styling, cream paper and newspaper red ink, reinforces that: you compose a headline, you don't fill in a grid.

A rejected word is met with a terse line at the top of the board, for example “LAEOD isn't a word we know.”, the letters remaining aligned over the tiles until you erase them. An accepted word does two things at once: it scores, and in the process it reveals a few boxes of the headline: those corresponding to the letters used. The headline bonus, shown under the row of boxes, was listed as +15 before any word was scored, and the help warns that it grows with played words then caps out. And the real negative signal doesn't spell it out: it's the row of dots that empties under a letter.

Daily

One game per day, numbered at the top of the screen, which the local save records under daily mode.

• Four letters is the floor set by the help: don't expect to score with three.
• The rarest letter on the board decides the game. Before each word, check that enough of it will remain for the headline, because the help warns that dropping too low ends the round.
• A word that uses all the letters is not enough, and revealing the last box of the headline is not enough either: the help panel insists that only the exact headline closes the round.
• The board's two gems pay more than other words, and leaving one unplayed can trigger the Risk it offer at the end of the game, at your own risk.
• The keyboard does everything: type to compose, Enter for Press, Space to shuffle the tile display, Esc to clear.