Newsletter 81

Everyone thinks that if you say you play a word game, it’s either Scrabble, crossword or Wordle clones. But have you heard about racing with words? Because that’s exactly how you play The Wiki Game Daily!

Basically, you have a start word and a target word. For example, “Apple fruit - Tooth”. You’ll then click through links related to both apple fruit and tooth, most likely related to natural sugar and oral health. The one who gets to the target word the fastest and with the least amount of links clicked wins!

Many groups, including AI Digest, featured this game in particular, and we actually interviewed the original creator of the game in our podcast. Give it a listen when you can!

Five game insights we think will pique your interest!

Start With Nothing, do something and you might get everything! Use your mouse to drag the letters and form words, and everything on the game screen is a letter. EVERYTHING. Just keep forming words until… the magic happens. You’ll see. It really surprised us at first!

Like minimalistic art with your word guessing game? Word Peaks hits both needs perfectly. Adequately challenging and easy to understand, it plays similarly to most daily word games you’ve played, except it has procedurally generated art with every answer you make, as well as a helpful range hint!

Our interview with the creator of this game was another exciting look at how indie game designers start out, check it out when you can!

Serenitrove is as casual as a game can get. You just dig up stuff and explore as deep as you can. Frankly, it does feel similar to the old game of Dig Dug, but there are no monsters here, so it’s a great game to lose a few minutes in or just zone out with.

Cavalier+ is a fun little chess survival game. You can only control the knight piece, and you have to survive for as long as you can as more and more pieces try to get you. The top score right now reached 10,000+, that person must be cracked at chess puzzles!

While it’s fun to play DOOM and other action games, there’s also a unique sense of excitement and satisfaction when you play word and puzzle games. Unlike action games and other games of similar genres which rely on hand-eye coordination, you win word games and puzzles through the use of your wits, and that in itself offers a different kind of gratification.

With words in mind, we have this quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian philosopher:

“Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.”

Did you have fun with the jokes and pranks last April Fools? On our side, well, we sure did, as some advertisements were really funny in their delivery and concepts! Looking for more witty entertainment? Then there might be something that tickles your fancy in our podcast.

If you want to learn more about what we’re up to at Hey, Good Game, you can find out more about us here.

Welcome April with a sunny outlook. See you next Friday!

The Hey, Good Game Team