Typeshift is bound for the iOS platform on March 18. We received a note about the game from developer Zach Gage, who’s previously worked on the likes of SpellTower, Really Bad Chess, Sage Solitaire and Ridiculous Fishing.

Gage partnered with Merriam-Webster to develop Typeshift, a title that “re-examines anagrams and crosswords.” Players use letter tiles to create words by swiping up and down. Here’s a GIF and some screenshots that demo the concept perfectly.

Why the love of old newspaper games, though?

Typeshift seems brilliant so far, as we received a code to check it out early. We were curious, though, why Gage is so interested in classic newspaper games. So, we asked him.

“I dunno, they’re interesting to me,” he told us. “I like looking at older forms of games that haven’t really made the jump to being video games, and leveraging being video games. It seems like a somewhat empty design space with a lot of historical constraints, and that makes it an interesting problem.”

The result is a beautiful mix of difficulty and minimalism, and I look forward to pouring some time into Typeshift… when my wife is home so I can use her phone.

This game is only coming to iOS, currently. Gage told us that “right now” he has “no concrete plans” for an Android release, “but I do have rough plans for one at some point.”

We’ll be waiting. The title is a free download, though you’ll need to pay to remove ads or snag puzzle packs.