Lingo

While video games are typically aimed as being entertainment products that does not mean they cannot be educational. Trivia-based games are increasingly common today, and games like Lingo helped to set the tone for that. While Lingo was first released in 1994, it still retains a mild cult audience all of these years later.

Lingo is a word-based game that has a very particular setup and style. This word-based game is capable of giving you a lot of laughs, but also more than a few headaches. Given it is close to 20 years since it was first released, too, there are some technical limits that, to the modern player, can make Lingo a tough sell.

Just like the TV show

Lingo is, of course, based on the popular TV show of the same name. The format of the game follows a pretty similar style, too; you are asked to guess a word that has no more than five letters involved. On the field of play, if you will, you have seventeen balls to pick from – each ball has a representative number. You pick a bingo card that is attached to the number and, depending on who has the turn, you will have either three red balls or three green balls. While you could probably compare this to something like Hangman, it has a lot in common with various word-based games you might have tried out. In fact, most of them learned the ropes from Lingo.

You pass these along to other players, which adds to the gamble nature. Guessing another letter could give your opponent the leg up, assuming they are correct in their guess. However, guess wrong and you lose one of your balls. So, in a way, this is a game of mind as much as it is one of language knowledge. You need to try and make sure that you balance out how many turns you use versus how many you give up, ensuring that the end results justify your success. The game might lack the atmosphere of the actual show, but it retains an impressive word repository of some 15,000 words so there is plenty of replay value for those who like to test their mind out.

Dated but delightful (7.5/10)

Today, you could easily find a range of games which all do the same thing as Lingo. Many of them would do it better, in fact. However, it is the legacy of Lingo that has helped us to create a world whereby we can enjoy this kind of experience. Dated but somewhat still enjoyable for those who like to test out their vocabulary, Lingo is worth trying out if you want an educational-entertainment game.

Pros:

• Over 15,000 words to choose from in the collection.
• Simple and fun – anyone could conceivably play Lingo.
• Great attention to detail to try and match the TV show style.

Cons:

• Dated, with many aspects of the game feeling hard to operate.
• Limited user interface can make interacting with the game challenging.