A bit like the offspring of board game Scrabble and Sega’s classic puzzler Puyo Puyo, “Scribendus” is just what it purports to be: a puzzle game where you build words to clear the board.
The two-letters-at-a-time mechanic is part of what invokes the feel of Puyo Puyo, as is the way the letters connect. It’s a nice 80 Microsoft Point diversion that’s a lot of fun for the wordsmiths in the audience.
Here’s what the developer (Pygmalion’s Box) has to say about the game:
“Scribendus is a word-based puzzle game where players must form words from falling pairs of letters. Test your vocabulary against the increasing speed of Marathon, or see if you can rise to the ultimate challenge by defeating all five levels of Ascension!”
Writings of Mass Deduction 
I had never seen this game on the dashboard … thanks for bringing it to our attention. It takes a while to get a “feel” for the game, as it is much faster paced than Scrabble, and you have to really pay attention to the next set of letters coming out in order to plan your wordplay. This is a real gem at 80 MSP and something few Xbox games are even slightly similar to; it took less than 2 minutes of gameplay to buy it!
Two minutes is pretty good for an indie game, I usually go the full 8 minute trial before buying it. I was more a Columns fan than a Puyo Puyo fan, but I still thought this was a great idea.
I usually play the trial at least twice before I buy. But there is sometimes I just know and buy like you did.
It didn’t take long to play to realize it was worth the 80 MSP; of course, the gameplay is not easy. It is very difficult to string things together and just a few bad sets of letters in a row and you are SCREWED. I don’t know how the letters are sequenced to be sent to you – it could very well be random – and that I don’t like about the game, particularly as you move on; for 80 MSP I can accept a few bruises on my apple. I’m not overly familiar with XBLIG, but I hadn’t found much else that offered such a neat (and mentally taxing) approach to puzzle solving. Ironically I find myself creating very base words, so perhaps a large vocabulary isn’t key to success with the game at all! I’d be interested to see if the developer(s) take this line of gameplay further.
[…] Writings of Mass Deduction is a blog run by a fellow who has been playing one XBLIG every day for the past couple of years and his review of Scribendus (Day 880!) finds the game to be “a lot of fun for the wordsmiths in the audience“! […]
Thanks for playing – I’m really glad you enjoy it!
What letters are given to you is based on their frequency in English (i.e., plenty of e’s, t’s, and a’s, not too many x’s, q’s, or z’s). You can see the full chart in-game in Appendix – Letter Probablity.
I generally find it best not to try to make a specific word, but to try to build up probable word endings or beginnings, like “ers” -> “tters” -> “tatters”, or “re” -> “ore”, which you can put almost anything in front of to get a word (bore, core, adore, fore, gore, threescore…).
Happy wording!