How does scoring work in Alphabear 2?

There are several aspects to your score in Alphabear 2. (If you played the original Alphabear or Alphabear: Hardcover Edition, the ideas are similar but the specifics have changed.)

Alphabear 2 Scoring

There are several factors that contribute to your overall score:

Word Score

• Each time you successfully submit a word, you get points equal to the number in the bottom-right corner of each tile that was used. E.g., in the screenshot below, the player is about to submit the word STATE. The S tile has a 6 in the bottom-right corner, so they will get 6 points for it. Likewise for the T, A, T, and E since they all happen to have 6's in their bottom-right corners. That's a total of 30 points, which is what is shown in the white Submit button at the bottom of the screen.
  
• Some bears or missions will give you extra points for meeting certain conditions when submitting the word. For example:
  • Floppy Bear' power is to passively give you 5 extra points if the word you spell ends in an S. These points contribute to your Word Score. There doesn't have to be a Floppy Bear on the board for you to get the extra points, but Floppy Bear does have to be one of the three bears selected for the mission in order to get the extra points.
  • Mission 1-5 awards extra points if you spell a word exactly 2 letters in length. These points contribute to your Word Score.
  • Note that, when such conditions are in effect, lengthening a word could possibly decrease the Word Score if the letter(s) added mean that your word no longer meets the conditions for the extra points.
• After successfully submitting a word, you can click the Last Word button (just above the Submit button) to see a breakdown how various letters and bears contributed to your Word Score.
  • Note: There is a known issue where this breakdown isn't showing the contribution of extra points from missions. But they are still factoring into your Word Score. If the numbers are adding up to less than the Word Score, this could be the reason why.

Bear Score

• The biggest bear on the board contributes 4 points per square occupied. (This is a change from Alphabear 1, in which all bears contributed to the Bear Score. In Alphabear 2, only the biggest bear affects the Bear Score.) E.g., in the screenshot below, the biggest bear is a 2x2 Doc Bear. Since he occupies 4 squares, the Bear Score is 4 x 4 =16 points.
  
• Bear Score does not contribute cumulatively on each turn; all that matters is the size of the biggest bear at the end of the match. So two players who finish with biggest bears of the same size get the same number of Bear Score points, even if one had a very low Bear Score for most of the game whereas the other had a very high Bear Score for most of the game. However, since the game knows at all times what the current biggest bear is, the score in the upper-right always includes the current Bear Score.
• Since the score in the upper-right always includes the current Bear Score, at the end of the match we'll tell you what Bear Score you finished with, but you won't see your score in the upper-right corner increase again by this amount because we already included it. E.g., in the screenshot below, we're just telling the player that the biggest bear contributed a bear score of +100, but those 100 points were already credited to the score in the upper-right so they won't see their score increase again. (This is another difference from Alphabear 1, in which Bear Score was only credited at the end of the match.)
  

Score Bonus

• Most bears have a Score Bonus. Selecting such a bear for a match will give you a bonus of that much on top of every point you earn through play (i.e., Word Score and Bear Score) in that match. In the screenshot below, the player has selected Cassette Bear as one of the three bears for this match. E.g., in the screenshot below, Cassette Bear has a 54% Score Bonus. So if, for example, the player scores 1000 points through play, the player will also receive an extra 1000 x 54% = 540 points just because Cassette Bear was on their selected team. Doc Bear and Floppy Bear have also been selected to this team, and so the player will get extra points based on their Score Bonuses, too.
  
• The extra points from Score Bonuses are already factored into the score shown in the upper-right. They are not factored into the score shown on the Submit button, or into the breakdown on the Last Word screen.

5% Score boost and 15% Score boost

• The cake icon shown in the lower-left corner of the screenshot below is a 15% Score boost. There is a similar 5% Score boost that has a cupcake icon. Using these boosts will start you out with 15% or 5% of the points needed to beat the mission. These points cannot be affected by bears' Score Bonuses or by anything else.
  
  
  • There is a bug in early versions of the game such that you might not see these points credited until after successfully submitting the first word of a match. But after the first turn they should be included in the total score shown in the upper-right.

Example

Below is the scoring breakdown for an example match. All of the above screenshots are also from this particular match, so their discussion above applies here.

• The player earned 282 total Word Score points over the course of the match.
• The player earned 100 Bear Score points because, as shown in the screenshots above, his biggest bear at the end of the match was a 5x5 bear that resulted in 100 points.
• So the total points earned through play (i.e., Word Score + Bear Score) were 382.
• Doc Bear's Score Bonus is 45%. Cassette Bear's Score Bonus is 54%. Floppy Bear's Score Bonus is 72%. Add that up and you get 171%. 382 x 171% = 653 bonus points because of the selected bears' Score Bonuses.
• The target score for this match was 269. So the 15% Score boost contributes 269 x 15% = 40 points. As mentioned, these points are not modified by the bears' Score Bonuses or by anything else, so the player got 40 points straight-up at the start of the match.
• 382 + 653 + 40 = 1075