A flock of hawks needs to travel from Oregon to Brazil—and in Birdigo, your vocabulary is the wind beneath their wings. Each word you spell moves your bird buddies along their migration route, but the farther they fly, the more points needed to pass stops along the way. Snag special feathers to boost your score and keep your pals soaring!

What we love: Making small words hit big. A word’s score is equal to its Flaps times its Power; if you’re holding the Goose feather (+50 Flaps for words with “OO”) and the Odd Duck feather (+5 Power if the word is an odd number of letters), “BOO” nets you an extra 250 points.

Quick tip: Use songs—permanent power-ups applied to letter tiles—to upgrade vowels whenever possible. Bumping a letter from speckled to platinum dramatically boosts its Flaps (and your score!).

Meet the creator: Hollywood screenwriter John August (whose films include Charlie’s Angels and Corpse Bride) teamed up with indie game developer Corey Martin to hatch this unique mashup of word game and card strategy.