AlphaJax brings multiplayer word game to Windows Phone 7

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

Confession: big word game fan here. Second confession: had no idea about this game until today, even though it came out October 21st.

AlphaJax is  a killer scrabble-type game that allows asynchronus multiplayer turn taking--which basically means you can play other people who also have a Windows Phone. We just took it for a quick spin (playing against our own Rob Alvarado) and left darn impressed with the feature set:

  • Facebook & Twitter integration (for sending out invite challenges)
  • Challenge anyone in your address book, Twitter, FB or random
  • Save screenshot of your game (seriously -->)
  • Push notifications + Live Tile (!)
  • Chat back and forth
  • Can play up to 20 simultaneous games with friends

The game costs $2.99 but we think it's totally worth it so far. Gameplay is smooth, the options are rich and the chat feature is just a bonus. The only downside, we suppose, is that your opponent has to be on a Windows Phone 7 device. We'll try to get a full review up but in the meantime...who wants to play me...

Check out their website for more info here or grab a trial here from the Marketplace.

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

19 Comments
  • Have you tried the excellent 'Spell It' yet Daniel? Excellent multiplayer scrabble type game and best of all it's FREE. Give it a try and see what you think.
  • Have not, lookin' into it, thanks!
  • I downloaded this game the other day as a trial (don't know how I missed it prior to that) and have also been playing Spell It for a over a week. AlphaJax is definitely more visually appealing and also has an advantage over Spell It with Twitter and FB integration. Spell It allows for up to 4 players in a game. I'm glad that the developers of both games knew to put in a screencap function. In my experience, Words With Friends on iOS was the most popular use case of screen capping for my friends and I. Looking forward a more detailed review., esp a comparison. I'd like to know if the $2.99 is worth it and which app handles turn notifications better. eta: Saw that Spell It has an update. The UI is nicer but still looks less polished than AlphaJax. I'm waiting for my opponents in the respective games to make a move to see if push notifications are working properly. btw, I'm ebponmeadow on both games.
  • I'm having problems with turn notificatios, as in it doesn't work. I just did a soft reset, and now it's working.
  • Yeah I'm getting the same problem, yet playing it against my Dad as well who's getting notifications, typical that the Computing student's phone isn't doing it whilst his Dad's phone that he set up for him works fine...
  • Just downloaded, username is JayTBennett so bring on the game invites... :D
  • Game on!
  • Spell it just did a upgrade. If it fixes the issues,then I'll keep using it. But I might just get this because of the facebook/twitter challenges!Ok, just got it. My screen name is 1jaxstate1
  • Not seeing the live tile function working on it either, unless it's something only available in the full game...?
  • Oh, I got the full game. Live tile is working for me.
  • Ah then you can answer a question I was wondering, will live tile only work on the start screen or are the game tiles in Xbox live hub live as well?
  • I just see it on the start screen. Not in the XBL hub.
  • yeah, you need to pin the app from the games hub to your start screen.
  • I have been using Spellit for several weeks now, and it's great. They've had some server problems (probably due to the number of people playing!), but they resolve fairly quickly. They also have push notifications and chat (chat shows up on live tile as well).It's a great FREE app! I'll give AlphaJax another try, but I am definitely keeping Spellit!Player name...meg2u!
  • Hi, If you need any support with alphajax, you can post it up at our support site http://alphajax.zendesk.com, or via twitter to @alphajax. Thanks for trying the game everyone;)
  • Thanks kpatton for the info--really enjoying this game so far, it's very well done (Best part: shaking the tiles to reorder them and it makes that little rattle sound. Awesome)
  • It's funny, we put that in right at the end, along with the screen grabbing, turns out people love these features, so glad we managed to squeeze them in.
  • it's great to see some competition for alphajax (even if i did make the game!), however i just tried to create a random game with SpellIt and it couldn't find anyone. I also just tried to invite you meg2u for a game and it said it couldn't create the game, anyone else have similar issue(s)?
  • On the issues with live tiles updating, unfortunately push notificaitons just don't always reach the device. The alphajax servers are successfully sending out the push notifications, but we find that sometimes (and this happens on my own devices too) the tile doesn't get updated immediately, but will on a subsequent move.