Retronyms, a San Francisco-based iPhone development boutique launched last May an iPhone application called Seek’n Spell. This application ($2.99 on the App Store) is an interesting mix of Scrabble and location-based gameplay.

Playing the game is quite easy and the rules very intuitive. You gather a few iPhone owners in a park, set duration for the game and get started. The application downloads a satellite picture of your surroundings and scatters virtual letters around it. To win points players run to “catch” the virtual letters and form words based on these letters. When the game duration is elapsed the player with the best score wins. In mixing sport and strategy, Retronyms is offering a unique, well balanced gameplay.

While Retronyms was not willing to comment on the sales of this LBS game, we learned that between May and August 2009 the game has been played over 12,000 times with an average of 630 times per week since the release. Players are coming from urban areas across the United States and Western Europe (see below maps where the game has been played).

“While there are some other projects that we're working on at the moment, we really enjoyed making Seek 'n Spell, and we'd definitely like to work on additional location-based games in the future!”, said Rebekah Fugate, Community Relations Manager at Retronyms.

The San Francisco Chronicle recently ran a large story on Seek’n Spell, read more here.