Quarrel Deluxe

A cartoonish single-player strategy word game combining the scoring mechanics of Scrabble with the turn-based territorial warfare of Risk.

The player and up to three AI opponents start with an equal allotment of territories with up to eight troops apiece. Each turn, players can attack neighboring opponents, re-balance troops between adjacent territories, gain randomized reinforcements, then defend against subsequent counterattacks. Successful attacks move all troops (minus one stay-behind) to occupy the conquered land. Losses reduce the attacking force to a single troop. Controlling all territories wins the game. There's a campaign with 12 unique maps in four lands, with a built-in randomizer and Daily Challenges for longevity.

The battles themselves are similar to Scrabble. Each player gets the same scrambled 8-letter word, and must build the highest-value word from it that they can muster, allowing one letter for each soldier on their side of the brawl. Like in Scrabble, letter rarity trumps word length in most cases -- given NIRUETQA ("quainter"), for instance, QUA would easily defeat URINATE. Tie battles are won by the fastest player. Guessing is allowed but three non-word attempts loses the battle. Other mechanics include making bonus words while other players are fighting, gaining back-up troops for solving the full anagram, and stealing extra "prisoners" when besting a more heavily-armed player (so playing QUA would result in 6-7 troops while URINATE would be reduced to one). End-game statistics detail average word scores, highest-scoring words, etc.