The Action-Packed Babble Royale: Where Scrabble Meets Fortnite
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What Babble Royale Is All About
Babble Royale is an example of a battle royale video game, hence the punny name. Instead of using characters like in an action game, players control letter tiles. Your goal is to control the game’s arena with your tiles and eliminate your opponent’s tiles.
You play against up to 15 other players who join the game at the same time. Everyone is spelling and moving as fast as they can to be the last letters standing. (Or should it be “last letters spelling”?) This can lead to a lot of pandemonium, which leads to a lot of jumbled tiles on the screen. That’s where the “babble” part comes into play.
A Fast-Paced Word Game
This game is all about being fast, tactical and competitive. You need to stay focused and look for every opportunity to take the lead over your opponent. Babble Royale also lets you customize your play. The Steam page description makes everything clear from the outset:
Babble Royale is an intense multiplayer free-for-all that combines word-making skill with fast-paced tactical and strategic action. Earn money and collect loot to upgrade your abilities, outrun the deadly hot zone, and outwit or outlast all your opponents to have the Last Word!
Babble Royale is only available for download through Steam. You will need to create a Steam account if you don’t already have one. Steam is free to join, and Babble Royale is free to download and play.
How to Play Babble Royale
Playing Babble Royale is fairly straightforward. You start by controlling a single letter tile. This starting tile will always be an A tile (though you can purchase the option to pick a different letter). From that single letter, you use other tiles to create words and assert your dominance.
Getting Started
Once you start a game, your tile will be dropped into the battle arena – literally. The first portion of the game is a short scene where your tile, and the tiles of everyone else playing, are sky dropped into the arena. As you fall, you are able to control and move your tile with the arrow keys. This is where the game truly begins.
As you fall and move your tile, look at the grid-based arena below. Decide where you want to fall. Some of the grids house special powerups that you need if you want to win. If you land on one, you can use it right away.
There’s also a chance you will land next to another player’s tile. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. It’s possible that you could eliminate a player next to you at the start of a game. But, that also means it’s definitely possible for them to eliminate you.
Once your tile is on the ground, you need to start spelling. This is where the game starts to resemble Scrabble and other similar word games. (A Scrabble word finder is a handy helper.)
In addition to your first tile, you also have a rack of five other letter tiles. Create whatever words you can to make your way across the arena. You can spell in any direction, but if you connect to an existing tile, they have to create a valid word. If it's in the Scrabble dictionary, it should be fair game.
When you use a letter or letters on your rack, new letters do not immediately replace them. There is a “recharge” period before the game gives you new tiles. This means you must plan ahead and be careful about which letters you use and when.
Conquering Your Opponents
Once you are on the move, it’s time to start knocking your opponents out of the game. To do this, you need to out-spell and outmaneuver them.
The words you play remain on the board.
Your most recent word becomes your “active” word. Every player has an assigned color, and your active word will always be that color. Other letter tiles are gray.
If a player creates a word that connects their active word to an opponent’s active word, then the opponent is “blown up” and eliminated from the game.
Eliminated players can either return to the game’s main menu to start a new game or they can stay and watch the current game as a spectator.
The Shrinking Arena
As you play, your opponents are not the only dangers you’ll face. Your other challenge is the arena itself.
As the game progresses, a timer will count down. When it hits zero, the arena will shrink, removing an equal amount of spaces from all sides of the grid.
Anyone whose active word is still in any of those spaces is automatically eliminated.
Once the spots on the board are gone, the timer resets and begins counting down again. This process repeats until either someone wins or there are no more tiles remaining.
Winning the Match in Babble Royale
To win a game of Babble Royale, you need to be the last player standing. This means that every other player has been eliminated, either by other players or by the shrinking arena.
The win condition sounds simple, but it takes a lot of skill (and luck) to avoid the other players’ attempts to eliminate you while you try to eliminate them. Plus, the constantly shrinking arena accelerates the pace of the game even more in later stages.
Powering Up Your Game
Skill and luck are critical in Babble Royale. At the same time, there are in-game factors that will contribute to your success and enjoyment, too. Those are the powerups, upgrades and customizable options.
The Powerups
Various powerups dot around the arena. They are single-use items that help improve your abilities and increase your strategic options. They're similar to the Words With Friends help you get from power-ups in that game.
These powerups include extra in-game money to purchase upgrades, bombs that destroy gray letter tiles around your active word, and the ability to shuffle letters on your rack. Collecting as many of these items as possible will help you quickly overwhelm your opponents while also protecting you from their advances.
The Upgrades
Upgrades are improvements you can make to your in-game tools as you play. When you spell a word, you earn some in-game currency. You can then spend your earnings to “buy” these upgrades. These upgrades only last for the duration of a single game.
Babble Royale upgrades consist of the ability to purchase powerups, the ability to reduce how long it takes to get new letter tiles, and the option to add more spaces to your letter rack. To make any progress in a game, you need to take full advantage of these boosts when they become available.
The Customizable Options
Before you start a match in Babble Royale, you have the option to purchase permanent enhancements and customizable features. These are mostly cosmetic improvements. Examples include new graphical patterns for your letter tiles, the ability to use emotes, and the option to choose your starting letter.
The most important thing you need to know about these options is that they cost real money to use. That’s the trick about free-to-play games. The core gameplay is always free, but not the extra features. If you really enjoy Babble Royale and want to personalize each game, though, you might consider purchasing individual upgrades or bundles.
Try Other Fun Online Games
Babble Royale is an exciting and captivating game that does an amazing job of blending two wildly different genres together. That’s the great thing about free-to-play games like this. They are made by designers who just want to make something new and fun that people will enjoy. If you want to download more free games, you can find some great options in our list of the best free word games.
Zac Pricener has been a content creator for the past eight years. He’s a bit of an all-around nerd, and he has a bad habit of working movie and TV show references into conversations whenever possible.
