Learn About WordSkull
By Suhas Sunder, Professional Software Developer - November 30, 2024
What is WordSkull?
WordSkull is a fun and fast-paced word puzzle game where you can improve your vocabulary by solving word challenges, get better at math with number puzzles, and participate in other fun learning activities. The classic mode of WordSkull feels a lot like Wordle but is designed to be more of a challenge as you solve for multiple words instead of just one. The goal is to guess the correct words in as few tries as possible. More game modes are on the way to mix things up and word it out!
Why did I make this word & puzzle game website?
As a software developer, I was searching for a challenging project to advance my programming skills and to add to my portfolio for potential employers to review. In mid-2022, I decided to take a break from playing Steam games to be more productive and instead focused on shorter puzzle and word games that offered much greater learning value. I started by spending a little time each day on typing test websites such as Typing Club (not affiliated) and decided to make my own improved version called Free Typing Camp.
However, after making significant progress, I realized that building the entire keyboard typing test application in React and Express as a single-page application might not have been the best approach for several reasons. I completed a working prototype, which was an amazing learning experience, but decided to revisit it in the future. I want to refactor the touch typing test project using a React framework like Next.js or Remix to handle server-side rendering (SSR) and offload more of the heavy lifting to the server side.
What was the inspiration for WordSkull?
Around the middle of 2023, I was spending a lot of my free time playing online puzzle games and word games. I was having fun playing various online puzzle games, which led me to create my own unique take on the word game genre. There were several games that inspired me to create this website including NYT Wordle, Scrabble, Boggle, Words with Friends, Bananagrams, Letterpress, Spelltower, Jumble, Bookworm, Ruzzle, 7 Little Words, amongst other popular word games. The first game I made is the classic version of WordSkull, named after the domain itself, which is a word game where you have to guess words of varying length before your run out of guesses (lives).
Other games I drew inspiration from include:
- CrossWord Skull (crossword puzzles)
- Cryp Skull (cryptogram puzzles)
- Num Skull (cross math and related math games)
- Sum Skull (cross math and related math games)
- Div Skull (cross math and related math games)
- Mul Skull (cross math and related math games)
- Sub Skull (cross math and related math games)
- Dumb Skull (Quiz game)
- Food Skull (Foodle, a trivia game somewhat similar to Wordle about food)
- World Skull (World history trivia game somewhat similar to Wordle)
- Spelling Skull (A word spelling game)
- Memory Skull (Memory game)
- Skull Eater (classic snake)
- Word Gobbler (classic snake)
- β οΈ Skull N Bones (tic-tac-toe)
- Dino Skull (Skull themed offline dino game)
- Dungeon Mahjong (Fantasy themed Mahjong)
- Dungeon Solitaire (Fantasy themed solataire card game)
I also have some unique ideas to explore, like creating a rogue-lite version.
Obviously, building all of this is a lot of work and time-consuming, so I don't intend to rush it or expect to have everything done anytime soon. Iβm taking an agile development approach, starting with the most important features first. Over time, Iβll continue to improve it and gradually add new game modes and features.
So, what's the game plan?
Once Iβve implemented a few game modes focused on word games that Iβm fully satisfied with, I plan to promote the site to gather user and community feedback on these engaging puzzle games. If users enjoy the games, Iβll continue building out the site until Iβve achieved all my target milestones for the project. If not, Iβll be content knowing Iβve at least reached the key milestones and will shift focus to other project ideas.
The quality of the project and creating a fun, engaging user experience are extremely important to me, so Iβd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. I hope this website helps enhance your learning experience and brings some fun along the way!
What do I like about the game so far?
I was skeptical about the game design because it looked good in my head, but I wasn't sure how good it would look once rendered in the browser. As expected, it did end up looking different than I had imagined, but I'm fairly satisfied with the results. It looks close enough to a skull to me anyway, and the aesthetics don't hinder the gameplay too much.
Having tested out the game almost daily, Iβve thoroughly enjoyed playing this first version of WordSkull, a fun addition to the growing world of puzzle games. I'm not very great at it, so I stick to the easy mode for the most part, but I enjoy it a lot which I think is a good sign. If I didn't enjoy the gameplay, I would likely have scrapped the idea altogether.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows though.
What issues did I face when making this word game?
One thing I need to work on improving is the words list for my word games. Some of the common English words I've aggregated are just impossible to guess at times, and since I'm using a massive list of words to incorporate 3 to 9 letters, it's going to be tough narrowing down that list until it becomes fun for users of all levels. Hopefully, it's not too bad of an issue. If you find any word that causes you trouble, please let me know.
Another thing I noticed was the amount of time I spend on the game. Each run lasts around 6 minutes on average while playing on easy difficulty, which could be too long considering how short each round in Wordle NYTimes lasts. I didn't find it to be an issue myself, but in the back of my mind, I felt like it was maybe taking too long, which I think could be a pain point for users. Only time will tell, I guess.
The third issue is the layout and user experience, which does annoy me to an extent. Similar to the NYTimes game, I want the classic mode to display the guessed words in an intuitive manner while also showing and highlighting the correct and incorrect characters. In Wordle, you're dealing with one word at a time on a 5 x 5 grid, so you can see every row clearly after completion.
Unfortunately, with the skull design, after an attempt is made on any given row, if the answer is not correct, once you clear the row, you can't see the previous rows. Obviously, for my version of the word game, this means you can't see the previous attempts for any given row on the skull itself.
The only solution I could think of without cluttering the user interface was to have a little window above the skull that displays the correct word. That looked great, but what about displaying the words for all previous attempts? Since you can't see those, it makes guessing significantly harder. So, to my dismay, I had to resort to adding a modal (pop-up window) that displays all prior entries for the row, which I feel is not the best user experience. Unfortunately, I don't really see any way around it.
I did my best to make it easy to toggle between the two modes by making the modal clickable while also binding it to the shift and spacebar keys for easy access. I find it tolerable when playing with a keyboard but do find it annoying at times, especially on small screens when using the mobile keypad. It is definitely my biggest gripe about the game, and I truly wish I had a better solution. If you have any ideas, I'm all ears.
Will there be an Android and iOS version?
That's the plan! I've done a little bit of mobile game development in the past using Corona SDK and Godot game engines. I feel like using React Native for this application because it's a framework I'm very excited to learn. The fact that it uses the React framework also makes it a natural choice for me. I'm excited to learn the nuances of React Native and the challenges it brings in contrast to working with React and browser based web application development in general.
Why is it called WordSkull π?
I was looking for a cool domain name that would make for a clever play on words to use for the design of this word game. I had a list of domain names that were mostly unavailable. I almost settled on WordSnail (grid formed from different shell shapes), but I'm glad I didn't because WordSkull was available and it's a really cool name, especially since it fits well with the rogue-light version I have planned. Hopefully, things go well enough that I can get around to developing the rogue-lite (fingers crossed π€π½π). As an added bonus, I get to use the skull emoji all over my site without making it seem cringe π.
Future plans?
I plan to add subtle details in the future to breathe life into each skull design, such as animated eyes that track the words and characters being typed, dialogue text with witty banter, and character bios. However, my priority right now is implementing word games and optimizing the user interface and user experience.
What about my other projects?
One thing I didn't mention is that when I started developing WordSkull, I stumbled upon Google Gboard's Emoji Kitchen website. I thought it was a fantastic concept and realized I could build a similar app in a relatively short time. This project turned out to be beneficial because it covered many concepts I hadn't yet learned, which I knew would be essential for my future projects.
I used it as a playground, and I'm quite proud of the result. While the code quality is far from perfect, everything works as intended. I got to experiment with features like taking HTML screenshots and making them shareable, as well as working with the Clipboard API to copy and paste image blobs and Unicode emojis. It was a lot of fun. Feel free to check out the source code if you're interested.
Another quick project I'm working on is a confetti maker website application which I decided to build because I need to implement a confetti maker component for this word game in order to add a little bit of fun to the winning animation. Turning it into it's own website didn't seem very difficult, so I decided to build a minimum viable product for now. It's not very fancy and I don't have any major plans for it, but it lets me experiment with the Canvas API in a standalone project and I like how it's turned out so far.
Thank you!
If you've reached this far, I'd like to thank you for reading through all that. If you have any feedback, I'd love to hear about it. If you want to share pictures of your progress or just want to say hi, you can find me on any of my socials listed on the socials page. Thanks again. I really hope you enjoy playing this game!
