-
-
1024 x 1024 icon
-
Game screen
-
RevenueCat Paywall
-
Main screen
-
Levels
Inspiration
Daily Arrow Words (Autodefinidos in Spanish, Mots fléchés in French) are the most popular crossword variant in Spain, Latin America and France: the clues live inside the grid and arrows point to where the answer goes, so you never have to look away from the puzzle. They are perfect for a phone screen, yet almost every arrowword app out there is either a scanned newspaper page or an English-only crossword clone.
We have been shipping word games under the TapLinko brand for a while (word searches, crosswords, Sudoku), and players kept asking for arrowwords with a fresh puzzle every day. Daily Arrow Words is the answer: a new arrowword every day in English, Spanish and French, built from the ground up for touch.
What it does
- A new arrowword every day, plus a large library of extra puzzles organized by category.
- Three difficulty levels so beginners and veterans both get a fair challenge.
- Three languages: play fully in English, Spanish or French, with puzzles written natively for each language (not translated).
- Hints and coins: reveal a letter or a whole word when you are stuck; earn coins by completing puzzles and keeping your streak alive.
- Daily streaks and rankings to keep you coming back.
- Premium powered by RevenueCat: remove ads, get coin packs and extra hints, or subscribe for the full ad-free experience.
How we built it
The app is written in Flutter/Dart, so the same codebase runs on Android, iOS and mac. The grid renderer is a custom widget that lays out clue cells, arrows and answer cells and handles touch input, keyboard focus and auto-advance between cells.
Puzzles are generated offline with a custom pipeline that fills grids from curated English, Spanish and French word lists, writes the clues and packs them into compact JSON that ships with the app and syncs daily.
Monetization runs on RevenueCat: products, entitlements and offerings are configured in the RevenueCat dashboard, and the app uses the purchases_flutter SDK to show the paywall, process purchases and check the premium entitlement to hide ads and unlock hints. Ads for free users are served through Unity LevelPlay with mediation.
Challenges we ran into
- Rendering arrowwords is harder than regular crosswords: clue cells can point right, down, or bend around a corner, and the layout has to stay readable on small screens.
- Generating good puzzles automatically in three languages, without repeated words or obscure fill, took several iterations of the generator and word lists.
- Balancing the free-to-play economy (coins, hints, ads) with a Premium offer that feels worth paying for.
Accomplishments that we are proud of
Going from prototype to a published, monetized app on Google Play, the Samsung Galaxy Store and the Apple App Store during the Shipaton window, with a puzzle generator that can keep producing daily content indefinitely and a clean RevenueCat integration that took a fraction of the time a hand-rolled billing layer would have.
What we learned
RevenueCat's entitlement model removes almost all of the platform-specific billing complexity: one customerInfo check replaces a lot of receipt validation code, and offerings let us tweak prices and packages without shipping a new build.
What's next for Daily Arrow Words
- More puzzle categories and themed weekly packs.
- Paywall A/B tests with RevenueCat Experiments to find the best Premium offer.
- Achievements and sharing your daily result.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.