Pretty fun. If you read his homepage https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/ he mentions he created Reddit's "The Button" and "Place" April Fools games. Dude's pretty creative.
If anything I think Wordle is such a great example of how a simple idea, but executed pretty perfectly, can get traction. Things like:
1. The letter flipping, as another commenter mentioned.
2. How the keyboard colors the keys after your guesses.
3. The social sharing, with the simple (text only!) sharing of your scores.
4. The "once-per-day" nature of it.
5. It's all basically in a single static JS file! I don't have to wait for anything to load, don't need to sign up or login, yada yada (of course, I pretty much expect the NYT to fuck that up, but oh well, that always happens over time).
I could basically see a ton of different iterations of this that wouldn't have been any where nearly as successful.
> of course, I pretty much expect the NYT to fuck that up, but oh well, that always happens over time
They have a number of free games that don't require any kind of account or registration. I am optimistic that they won't introduce any unsavory elements to it and turn off the playerbase it's amassed.
If you look at these games you can see that Wordle is a perfect fit. There is no other way to put it.
If Wordle were already in that games list it wouldn’t stick out at all. Especially the aspect of having a daily puzzle that’s the same for everyone is a great fit. Even the whole design aesthetic is similar (it’s a pleasantly useable experience all around).
The biggest differences are the ads and the registration requirement. Which are, I guess, in a sense both ways to fuck it up.
Sorry, I beg to differ. I just clicked on your link and tried the Spelling Bee game. Started playing, after I hit my fifth word the game terminated and I got a popup:
You’re good at this!
Know more words? Subscribe to reach our Genius ranking.
With a subscribe button.
I don't blame NYT for doing this, at all. If you pay millions of dollars for something, you expect a return. But this kind of "stop what you were interested in doing right when it starts becoming fun so you can subscribe" is exactly the type of annoying shit I was talking about.
Note that you can basically save the website locally and since it has the full 2300 word list hard coded in the JS bundle, you can technically keep playing offline until 2028.
Pretty fun. If you read his homepage https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/ he mentions he created Reddit's "The Button" and "Place" April Fools games. Dude's pretty creative.