Just A Phrase Review

Lightwood Games makes the best word games on the Nintendo Switch (and other systems). Thats just a fact. So their newest game, Just A Phrase, should be pretty great right? Here’s our review of Just A Phrase for the Nintendo Switch!

Just A Phrase is a hangman type game for the Nintendo Switch. Basically, this means that you have to guess letters to complete a phrase. All the wrong letters go to the bottom on the screen. The problem with Just A Phrase being a hangman game is…there is no hangman…

If you get a letter wrong in Just A Phrase, you get a letter wrong. You can try as many times as you want to solve the puzzle. There is no real penalty for getting wrong letters. This is where Just A Phrase fails as a hangman game. Sure, guessing letters is neat, but without a penalty, the game isn’t as interesting. Hangman has always been about figuring out the word or phrase before your character is hung by a rope. Hangman is a challenge and Just A Phrase doesn’t live up to that part of the game.

As a guessing game though, Just A Phrase isn’t bad. The controls, both analog and touch, work just as well as previous Lightwood games. The interface is the same we’ve seen with their other games, so is the music. The eye rolling humor, a part of Lightwood Games charm, is back and in full force via puzzles that are not exactly what you think they’ll be.

Just A Phrase is an ok game. It isn’t the worst game that Lightwood Games ever created nor is it the best. If you like guessing games, you could do worse than this one.

Just A Phrase gets a 6.0 out of 10.

Thanks to Lightwood Games for providing a digital code for this review. Just A Phrase is now available on the Nintendo Switch eshop.