Ready for next year’s new adventure?

Welcome to this week’s issue of Game On! where we find the best game tips, resources, and insights from hours of research every week.

If you’re like us, you hunkered down during the holidays and watched a few movies with your friends and family. Well if you love movies, you’ll love our next podcast episode.

In this week’s podcast, we spoke with Nilanth of CineNerdle, where Wordle meets Cinema.

Nilanth shares a bit about his love of horror films, and how Wordle inspired his game which hosts 30k players every month and over 15 million games played.

Check it out, then read this week’s issue!

Five game insights we think will pique your interest!

Interested in game design for the upcoming year? Then let us tell you beforehand that puzzle game designing is a completely different ballpark. There are many things to consider, like whether will it be a linear or non-linear experience, or how can you make the game fun and challenging without being repetitive. Should the difficulty be restricted to a mass audience or a niche and dedicated fanbase? These questions are just some of the many things to keep in mind if you want to give puzzle game designing.

We’ve already covered many topics regarding games in a classroom setting this year, but most were generally encompassing. If you’re in the education industry, check out these nine different types of Math games that can be implemented in a lesson plan to make the class more interactive and interesting in 2024.

If all this talk about games and education is fuelling your interest in becoming a game designer for next year, don’t worry, we got you covered! Here’s a step-by-step guide you can use as a reference for your journey into designing your own unique game. However, keep in mind that the instructions here are meant to nudge you in the right direction, so don’t treat it like a game development manual.

Puzzle games are a dime a dozen, and only a few become classics that reach beyond generations. Crossword puzzles are among the most recognizable and fun puzzle games you can play this year, next year and beyond. From people in the late 80s to a student in university passing the time, there’s always a chance to play a crossword puzzle, and playing has many notable benefits for you!

At the end of the day, puzzles are there to entertain and poke at your mind. From mechanical puzzles to digital platformer ones, their main goal is to challenge your mind or give you the satisfaction of easily solving one. We sometimes wonder how dull the world would be without games like Sudoku or the Rubik’s Cube, and it is definitely a sobering thought!

So when you face a hard puzzle, remember the basics and don’t get mad at the game. It is there to entertain and invigorate the mind. As Amit Kalantri, an Indian author and mentalist, would say:

“A life without puzzles would be an unending monotony.”

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

Thanks for reading this year’s last newsletter issue and have a Happy New Year!

See you next Friday!

-The Hey, Good Game Team