Haiku Journey

Haiku Journey is a word puzzle game with Oriental themes. The gameplay is similar to Boggle, Bookworm and other similar titles, where the objective is to connect letters from a grid to create words of three or more. The letters are presented as Japanese paper lanterns, and they can be connected vertically, horizontally and diagonally. Each new word lights a lantern, and when all are lit they change color and the player receives an Omamori, a good luck charm that multiplies the points. The colors have increasingly higher multipliers associated with them, from 1,5 to 3. The goal of each level is to attain a certain number of points, shown at the top of the screen.

An open book at the left side shows the titular haiku, a short and simple form of poetry from Japan. The haiku letters are initially hidden, and the first letter of each newly created word acts as a guess, slowly uncovering the verses. When the poem is complete, the player receives bonus points. The solution can be guessed by pressing the solve button and typing the missing letters, or bought with points as well.

Power-ups appear when creating long words. The flower acts as a wildcard, taking the place of any letter. Some letters show beads around it that fade away with time, and using them on a word throws these spheres around grid, lighting random lanterns. If the player creates too many three letter words, the background gets darker and a tornado starts to move randomly around the grid blowing out the lanterns. It can be eliminated by creating a word with the letter where it is currently stationed.

There are two buttons at the bottom of the screen to shuffle the whole grid and swap pairs of letters. After completing a series of levels, the player receives one of the Engi-monos, special books that reveal words, light lanterns, uncover haiku letters and help in other ways. Only three can be use on each level, from a total of ten available throughout the game.

There are two modes, time and puzzle. In the time mode, there is a time limit shown on the hourglass at the right side of the screen. In the puzzle mode, the player has a limited number of moves to achieve the required number of points.