Welcome to our App of the Month article! This is going to be my fairly regular feature that focuses on gaming apps of all sorts that I enjoy bringing out again and again. This month, we’re looking at Paperback!

Designer: Tim Fowers
Artist: Ryan Goldsberry

Deckbuilding is one of my favorite game mechanisms. I have a lot of fun with word games. The two merge elegantly in Fowers Games Paperback. The goal of the game is to get the most victory points by creating the words that score the highest amount of points. Your starter deck has an R,S,T,L,N, and five wilds, which let you pick any letter of the alphabet to make your word. There is also a vowel card pile that you are able to select the top card to put into your word.

Once you have made your word you can use the money it is worth (as indicated by the cards) to buy letter cards, that have either one or two letters on them and have various abilities. You may also use your money to buy a novel (hence the name, Paperback). The novels are in four different piles, which each have a different cost and reward a different number of victory points.

The app implementation of this game is wonderful. The artwork looks very sharp. All of the novels that have victory points stand out with their different covers. The color coding of the letter cards that you purchase is well done and easy to differentiate. At the end of the game, the app will tell you what the best, highest scoring word is. The best word in the last pass and play game I played was Dingbat for 9 points, but we’ve been known to do words that were upwards of 13 points once in awhile!

My favorite mode to play the Paperback app is the pass and play mode. In that mode, you can play kind of cooperatively; helping each other make words if your opponent is stuck and vice versa. You can also play against the AI and play multiplayer online, asynchronously. The asynchronous online games take some time but they are still worthwhile.

Paperback makes you think and gives your vocabulary a workout. The app and game overall are lots of fun. If you like word games and enjoy deckbuilders, this app is for you.

The app for the game Paperback is available on both iOS and Android devices for $3.99, which is totally worth the cost.

Have you tried the Paperback game, either in physical form or app form? What did you think of it? Is it a go-to, like it is for us? What other apps would you like us to feature on App of the Month?

Game On!
Sarah