But it turns out that’s just coincidence. And we can know this for sure because Wordle is entirely client-side, with a hard-coded dictionary of around 10K valid guess words and another hand-curated list of around 2.3K “common” words that it uses to pick the daily puzzle. So we can just view the source code to see that the only thing the NYT has changed apart from the font is to remove a few less-well-known puzzle words from the upcoming list (for example, “agora” was originally going to be secret word yesterday) and to remove a few problematic words from both lists.

It’s refreshing to see a successful game with so little server-side interaction, especially since it would have been easy to add a little reliance on a server just to maintain more control. Miss yesterday’s puzzle? Just set your clock back a day and play it: the secret word is picked from the list based on system clock. Don’t like the new font for some reason? The original version is fully playable at archive.org. You can even cache the page locally and play it offline into the foreseeable future.

There’s a Kickstarter that I’m affiliated with that has just launched.

Short Version: I’d appreciate you checking it out/telling your friends
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1526351393/load-the-ark

Long version: The Kickstarter will complete a dream of one my students from the UW’s Game Design Program. His purpose, stated clearly on the 1st day of class, was to create great family friendly games as he felt he could improve the quality of games in that market. Family friendly in this context doesn’t read as Christian but rather classical-Deist and accessible to all ages.

He approached me after graduation with an exceptional game design; a Tile-Swapping Game (like Bejeweled or Tetris) where every tile is an animal. A game where the animals move and interact with each other based on their natural behaviors and themed with along the lines of Noah’s Ark..Thus Load the Ark was born.

I felt especially honored that he wanted me to act as an adviser for the project. He’s been doing everything right, he’s built a company able to deliver on the game’s promise, he’s built prototypes of the design and he’s worked with talented artists to build a game that’s visually charming.

All in all, if you’d like to see a unique take on tile-swapping games that is accessible to children but with a depth of play that will intrigue adults as well, check it out.

[Migrated from Google+]

[Migrated from Google+]