Crossovers by POWGI Review

Eat, sleep, occasionally shower, repeat: It is what the Christmas holidays are all about. 

Yet in an attempt to not lose too many brain cells this festive period, Lightwood Games have brought out another puzzler. Crossovers by POWGI may have released back in 2019 for the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita, but its arrival on Xbox could not be timelier. Read on to find out if this crossword/anagram hybrid is worth your time.

In Crossovers by POWGI you need to solve little, tiny crosswords. These are so small, they are only formed of two words crossed over each other, and you need to find the letter where they intersect. This is only half the puzzle though.

Those letters that you do find are then all shown on screen, hinting at an anagram for you to solve. You are given a cryptic clue to help you, but if you cannot think laterally about these puzzles then these are likely to be more of a hindrance than actually offer guidance. Most of the time though, you can figure these out eventually. They range from four to eight letters so shouldn’t be too demanding, as long as you can spell.

For the crossword section, you are given a choice of four letters to choose from, filling in the missing square. Fret not if you choose the wrong letter from the four, as rather than letting you try and solve the anagram with an incorrect letter, Crossovers will not move onto the next mini crossword until the right letter has been found. In a way this is good, as the letters given to you will fill in the blank space for at least one of the words, but only one fits for both. However, letting you happily progress none the wiser would at least add a layer of difficulty. The crossword section should be as easy as they come, with only the anagram finisher providing any meaningful difficulty.

Unlike other POWGI games, there is no option to suspend a puzzle and return to it later. Sometimes the anagrams prove to be a bit tricky but quitting out and replaying the level later on causes it to reset. As I said though, the crossword section is the easy bit, and can easily be done again in less than a minute.

As a result, there is no hint system this time around. Through being smart or utilising dumb luck, you will always have the correct letters to solve the anagram. Plus a cryptic clue, so what more do you want?

In total, there are 200 words to find, which is a decent amount. Within these there must be around 1000 crosswords to solve before getting to the anagram, meaning there is a fair old chunk of word puzzling to be done in Crossovers by POWGI.

As usual for a Lightwood Games POWGI puzzler, completing a puzzle rewards you with an excellent pun that ties back into the word you have just found. After some fifteen releases on Xbox, these still don’t get old, and it is impressive how many of them are repeated throughout the other games.

Another form of reward is found in the easy achievements that can be had in Crossovers by POWGI. There are thirty-nine to unlock, and as usual with a word-based POWGI, there is an achievement for each letter of the alphabet. Letter fans will know that only covers twenty-six of the achievements, but what are the other thirteen? Well, as is also customary, there is an achievement for anagramming the scientific word for the male genitalia, as well as finding various other words that aren’t the correct one within the anagrams. Naturally, letters such as Q and X will be more difficult to come by, but the last achievement you will likely unlock is for finishing every puzzle, so they should come naturally as you play through all 200.

Crossovers by POWGI is another example of what the POWGI games do best; take existing puzzle types and mash them together for something fun and unique. And with 200 of them on offer this time, you get a very good amount. 

These can be solved slightly quicker than others such as Just a Phrase by POWGI, Flowers by POWGI or even Gaps by POWGI, so should take around the same time to unlock every achievement. All the other POWGI traits are here too: Same UI, same musical accompaniments and of course, the cheesy puns. 

However, because this is a port of an older game from the Lightwood Games back catalogue, it is missing some of the newer ‘features’ including a dark mode option and slightly updated music. Everything else however is as you would expect; if you’re a fan of these games and like easy achievements, you’ve probably already downloaded it. For everyone else, Crossovers by POWGI is a good jumping on point to see what the fuss is all about.

Crossovers by POWGI is on the Xbox Store