Word Chums has been on the App Store since 2012, which makes it one of the longer-running word games on mobile. It rarely gets the press that Wordle or the New York Times games attract, but it has held a loyal audience of daily players for well over a decade. The backstory is more interesting than the quiet profile suggests. The studio behind it was founded by one of the people who built Age of Empires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you have never looked past the cartoon avatars, here is who made Word Chums, when it launched, what makes it different from Scrabble and Words With Friends, and where to download it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Word Chums comes from PeopleFun<\/a>, a studio in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 2011 by Tony Goodman, who co-created the Age of Empires strategy series<\/a> at Ensemble Studios in the late 1990s, along with co-founders Angelo Laudon and John Boog-Scott. Several of the team had worked together at Ensemble before it closed, so Word Chums was built by people with a long track record in games, not a first-time mobile shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Word Chums was PeopleFun’s launch title<\/a>, released on iOS on 13 September 2012, with an Android version following in 2013. The same studio later made Wordscapes, which became one of the biggest word games on mobile after its 2017 release. The people who shaped a defining real-time strategy series of the 1990s spent the next decade building casual word games instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At first glance Word Chums looks like every other tile game. You build words on a 15 by 15 board, the first play crosses the centre star, and rare letters score the most. Look closer and a few things separate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The signature feature is the Chums themselves. Every player picks a customizable animated character and dresses it up with coins earned through play. Scrabble and Words With Friends are largely faceless. Word Chums adds a personality layer, with a Chum Market full of outfits and backgrounds that you unlock as you level up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It also runs its own dictionary. The word list is Scrabble-style but not identical to the lists Scrabble or Words With Friends use, so a word that scores in one of those games is not guaranteed to be legal here. That single difference is why players who jump between tile games get caught out, and why a dedicated word finder for this game is worth having.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The scoring rewards medium plays earlier than Scrabble does. Word Chums gives a bonus for using five or more tiles in a single turn<\/a>: plus 10 points for five letters, plus 20 for six, and plus 40 for all seven. Classic Scrabble only pays the big bonus when you empty your whole rack. The result is a game that nudges you toward more ambitious plays sooner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, Word Chums leans into power-ups. Hints point you toward a strong word and the best place to play it, and bombs clear your entire rack and deal a fresh set when you are stuck. You can play up to four people at once, in solo matches, team games, or quick games against random opponents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Word Chums is free to play, supported by ads, with optional in-app purchases for coins and Chum items. It is available on the Apple App Store, on Google Play<\/a> for Android, and on the Amazon Appstore. Your account and games carry across devices, so you can start a match on a phone and finish it on a tablet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are building two free tools for Word Chums players: a Word Chums Cheat that finds every word your rack can play, ranked by score with definitions, and a Word Chums Board Solver that factors in the bonus squares on your board to surface your highest-scoring move. Both are in development and will launch soon. We will link them here when they go live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Word Chums was made by PeopleFun, a studio in Richardson, Texas, founded in 2011 by Tony Goodman, a co-creator of the Age of Empires series, with Angelo Laudon and John Boog-Scott. It was the studio’s first mobile game.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Word Chums launched on iOS on 13 September 2012, with an Android version following in 2013. It has been updated steadily ever since.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Yes. Word Chums is free to download and play, supported by ads. It also offers optional in-app purchases for coins, hints, bombs, and Chum customizations.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It shares the core idea of building words on a 15 by 15 board with premium squares, but it uses its own tile values and its own dictionary, so legal words and final scores differ between the three games.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Word Chums is available on the Apple App Store<\/a>, on Google Play for Android<\/a>, and on the Amazon Appstore<\/a>. It is free, with optional in-app purchases.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Word Chums has been on the App Store since 2012, which makes it one of the longer-running word games on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":1833,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_is_featured":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-board-games","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1834,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832\/revisions\/1834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewordfinder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What sets Word Chums apart from Scrabble and Words With Friends<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Where to download Word Chums<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Help with Word Chums is on the way<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n\n\n
Who made Word Chums?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
When did Word Chums come out?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Is Word Chums free?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Is Word Chums the same as Scrabble or Words With Friends?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Where can I download Word Chums?<\/strong><\/h3>\n