Morning Words

A fun word puzzle game for all ages. Search, find, and connect words, destroy obstacles and collect coins in a letter grid.

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What problem does it solve?

  • Entertainment.

Who is it for?

  • For all ages in general, but maybe mostly like it for seniors (+50, leaning slightly female).

What does it let them do?

  • It is a word search game that may keep their brain active.

How does it make money?

  • You can remove ads via IAP purchases.
  • You can buy offers/packs from the shop as well.
  • You will be able to increase inventory via watching rewarded ads.
  • Between levels you may see an interstitial ad.
  • Banner ads will also be shown at the bottom.

What makes it interesting or different?

I created Morning Words from the merge of Alphabetty Saga (by King) and Royal Match (by Dream Games). It is not a pure word search and it is not a match-3 game, so it is a mix in between.

Which award categories are you targeting?

  • Best Game Award
  • RevenueCat Design Award
  • HAMM Award? Maybe.

Target audience:

+50 (maybe a bit towards female).

  • They need big numbers/interfaces due to their age.
  • They want simple stuff, not complicated elements or text.
  • Those people are afraid to purchase; often, they don't have any payment setup.
  • Most of the monetization will come from ad revenue.
  • The ones that pay will first remove ads, then buy most of the offers you put in front of them on the screen.
  • A clue if a user is a payer vs non-payer can come from the device type. An Apple device usually means they tend to be a payer, or if the user is using an up-to-date device, that can be a clue as well. On the other hand, a user with an older device probably will not be a payer.

Game Mechanics & Loop:

The core loop is simple. As a reference, you can think of Candy Crush Saga or Toon Blast. You play a level with a mechanic, then return to a map/home screen for progression. In our case, the mechanic is to form words next to or over the obstacles to destroy them and complete objectives. The strategy/fun comes from where you make the word and its length. Maybe you are looking to create a booster to combine with another booster. Maybe you want to collect a coin first. Maybe you want to destroy a specific obstacle first because of XYZ... so these decisions are what create fun.

The challenge for this word game is that if you play a level, hard uncommon letters (like (Q), (X), or (Z)) end up at the bottom, and you as a level/game designer need to think of how to mix the board; otherwise, half of the bottom board becomes unplayable. I have a solution for that:

Proposing a booster fill bar that fills via score. As the player gets more score during gameplay, the booster bar will fill. Once it fills (100\%), a booster will be placed to clear the part of the board detected as unplayable (or hard-to-find letters):

$$ \text{Score Accumulation} \longrightarrow \text{Fill Booster Bar } (100\%) \longrightarrow \text{Clear Unplayable Bottom Grid} $$

I also have my friend Khaled Alroumi (Product + Monetization + Growth) whenever I need advice. He worked with a lot of famous games: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaled-alroumi-70b222b7/

Ads design challenge:

  • Add too many reward ads and you will blow up the economy.
  • Add too many interstitials and you will blow up retention.

So you need to find the right balance between rewards you give them because they completed a task vs. when you give them the option to get a reward from an ad.

Places I'm planning to put an ad:

  • On login
  • When they close the shop without purchase
  • When they want to double their coins collected from completing a level
  • Maybe when they need to use an item they don't have, such as a booster
  • Interstitials between some levels, keeping ad fatigue/retention into account
  • Banner ad at the bottom
  • Future places will come later on.

I tried to keep the visuals alive and welcoming. Took references from Alphabetty Saga, Toon Blast, and Royal Match. As I mentioned before: big buttons, big text, and very easy/clear UI elements. All credits go to the artist team; I only provided the guidance and they came up with the amazing stuff. I put a lot of effort into finding good, sticky map/home screen music. Combined with beautiful art, it makes the game memorable! I really like opening the game Word Search Explorer just for its background music.

Build Story

Inspiration

I created Morning Words from the merge of Alphabetty Saga and Royal Match.

What it does

Players link adjacent letters to form words and clear the board. You destroy nearby obstacles to complete level objectives and progress through the game.

How we built it

Built with Unity and C# for cross-platform performance. I used Google Antigravity IDE to speed up coding and I hired two freelance artists to design/draw the full art of the game. I also used the Unity Asset Store website to purchase assets to complement special effects and audio.

Challenges we ran into

  • Polishing the game as much as you can is always a challenge. Reiterating over the art is a go back-and-forth with the artists while trying not to punish their work. I was lucky to work with those amazing freelancers.
  • Staying focused on what you are doing. Trying not to get distracted and keeping your head focused on the game.
  • Hiring other roles. For instance, animators are very expensive and hard to find under budget.
  • Finding the right game music and sound effects is very time-consuming.
  • AI tends to allocate memory everywhere, creating silent performance bottlenecks. Because of this, languages like Rust and lower-level systems with manual memory management are going to surge in popularity.

What we learned

  • Discipline towards a deadline. Sprint whenever you have to sprint, and cooldown whenever it is needed.

What's next for Morning Words Game

  • Leaderboard (in progress)
  • Progression items such as Collections
  • Win Streaks to keep the player FOMO mode on
  • Teams: A social feature that will improve player retention (once the user base grows)
  • Optimize ad revenue and IAP revenue
  • ASO / Store assets optimization
  • Producing a ton of levels and gameplay content
  • Pay attention to analytics data to improve and monitor the game. We must fall in love with retention, otherwise this game may be a failure.

Team

Ester Calull - General artist. Anden Mars - Props artist. Vy Châu - UI/UX artist. EJ Filamor - Level design assistant/tester, ASO Josep Calull - Programmer. Project designer/guidance. Gemini Flash - Very good coder.

Story on HackerNoon

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/157QLW9-9tBT2xSJCXVMPlnFFclHKqBbQs3xVKqwdZXw/edit?usp=sharing

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More here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10xTu85tr0ranNvqdA1Q0lisAxiUEt_aFlBDcCVqKj3Y/edit?usp=sharing

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