Wordit! — a unique word game
Nice To Meet You
Hi there. This is my first article on Medium, a bit exciting experience. My name’s Tim, and I live in Kyiv, Ukraine.
The Idea
I suppose everyone is familiar with the word game called Wordle. It is a relatively simple but very addictive game. Following its success, I recalled that a few years ago, before I even heard about the game or played something similar, I invented my own word game. However, at that time my life was busy with many things, pleasant and not, so I just put the idea aside. Besides, I had no relation to game development. Although my game was simple, its development might have been a long and costly process. The recent success of Wordle woke up my almost-forgotten idea.
The Wizard
Fortunately, at that time, I had the best partner I could ever dream of. That was my 15-year-old son Daniel. He started programming in Java when he was 13 and had become experienced enough to develop apps for Android.
By that time, he had finished developing his previous app — +note. This is an easy-to-use notepad combining all kinds of notes: lists, photo/video, and voice recording. It is a very complex app, all its components — calendar, camera, voice recorder, players, database, search, and reminders — were developed by Daniel from scratch as he found ready solutions not suitable.
Therefore, he was ready and eager to build something brand new, unique, and challenging. We discussed my idea implementation in terms of feasibility, difficulty, and viability. It seemed that it had a right to exist and be implemented.
The Game
The player gets two words. The first word has to be transformed into the latter in the least number of steps possible. A lower average of steps means more efficient solving. On each step, the next word can be transformed by altering one letter, adding/deleting one letter, or changing the letters’ order in the word. For instance, the word “meet” can be modified into “met”, “time” or “teams”.
Unlike in Wordle, in our game, you can (actually, you are even encouraged to) share your results because you don't guess the word but pave the way from one word to another. There can be lots of possible solutions ways, and the most efficient of them consists of a lower number of words in the middle.
The Wordit! app is free, and you can download it here:
Along with the free app, we have released Wordit! PRO — the paid version containing a “STAR mode” where the player can choose a pair of words. Thus, you can challenge your friends and family members in solving the same pair of words, and the fastest wins.
The Development
The first difficulty was checking the spelling of the English words. There are some free tools for that, but after reviewing them, Daniel decided to develop his own spellchecker. He found a free English word list and coded an algorithm.
The second task was to check each next word's compliance with the rules. For that purpose, another algorithm was developed.
I am not a UI or UX designer, nor is my son, but we tried to do our best in bringing the simplest interface we could. This was the hardest part: to make it simple and clear, but different from others.
It took about five weeks to complete the app’s development even though many days we were not able to work amid the hard obstacles — lack of electricity and Internet connection. Frequent blackouts lasted long hours and even days. Our “record” was about 100 hours of total blackout: no light, water, gas, or heating, with -10°C outside.
Even now, at the time of writing this article, we have not had any electricity, internet access, or even mobile service for more than 50 hours.
Despite these difficulties, we managed not to lose our enthusiasm and willingness to complete the app.
I am really proud of my son, he did a fantastic job.
We hope you will love the game and it will help you to survive boring commuting or brighten up long winter evenings at home.
We wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
