Addictive, asynchronous Scrabble-em-up Words with Friends is coming to Android within a month, says publisher Zynga. Most importantly, it will support cross-platform play, allowing you to swap triple-word-score zingers with friends playing the iPhone and iPad editions of the vocab game.
The popular app shares a number of similarities with Scrabble: You lay out letters on a board to make words, and hopefully rack up a high score by hitting point-boosting tiles and using the alphabet's rarer letters.
But the secret ingredient is the ability to play with a buddy, without having both players trading words at the same time. You simply submit your best word and the other player gets a push notification to let them know it's their turn. Whether they wait a week or five seconds to make the next move is up to them.
You can also have text-based conversations with other players and have up to 20 games on the go at once. All of these features will be available in the Android edition.
The initial release will be a free, ad-supported version. In the coming months, publisher Zynga will offer an ad-free, paid-for edition. If it's anything like the iPhone version, it won't cost more than a couple of bucks.
The popular iOS title has racked up more than 10 million downloads since launch. That wild success led FarmVille creator Zynga to scoop up the game's designer, Texas-based Newtoy. The 23-strong company was rebranded Zynga With Friends.
Screengrab courtesy Zynga
