DownWords - Daily Word Game

Main screen
Challenge levels
Standard board
Cross board in play
Daily Challenge hub
Cross board, letters selected
Failed Daily Challenge attempt
Cross board
Achievements, Linked play
Achievements, Daily play
Achievements, My Stats

Inspiration

My spouse and I both love word games, crossword puzzles, and games in general. I grew up playing Scrabble and got pretty good at it over the years. My wife is an amazing Boggle player who generally crushes everyone she plays. Whenever we play each other in those games, the stronger player usually wins and it’s not very competitive.

I wanted to create a game that had aspects of both games, and would allow both players to use their strengths and adjust their strategy accordingly in order to win. The result is DownWords.

What it does

It's a word game that mixes letters with different values and multipliers with a timed word search on aboard filled with letter tiles. Find a word and those letters are removed from the board, and new letters cascade in from the top. I think it’s pretty fun.

How we built it

Claude, Devvit, Phaser

Challenges we ran into

Adapting to Phaser, making sure game play and letter mix are good, ensuring levels and challenges are beatable.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Just making a game in the first place! This was an idea I had over 10 years ago, but put aside because it was too hard, time consuming, and expensive the build back then. I forgot about it entirely until I started playing a different word game, and decided to take a shot at building it now that I had all the capabilities.