Wordle word puzzle game suddenly became a trending topic on social networks, despite its simple form and no special features.
Wordle, developed by programmer Josh Wardle in New York, is available on the App Store and web browser for free from October 2021. The game got off to a humble start with 90 players per day. In November, this number increased to 300,000. However, as of this week, the game recorded more than two million participants.
On social networks, Wordle is becoming a trending topic with a series of articles sharing the results achieved or playing tips.
Wardle herself was also surprised by Wordle’s “heat”. He shared on NPR that the game was created for one of his partners, Palak Shah, who loves charades. Shah later joined Wardle in developing the game.
When I created the game, I said no to the usual characteristics of a mobile game: no notifications to keep players engaged, no annoying ads. I simply wanted people to have fun with the game. Wardle stated. He thought wordle today was a lot of fun because it was easy to use but also had a lot of challenges.
Adam Procter, head of the Department of Game Design at the University of Southampton, says part of Wordle’s appeal is that it makes players feel like they’re going back to the early days of the internet, where games were small, feature-simple, and still popular. This expert also thinks of popular games thanks to other simple gameplay, such as Flappy Bird, 2048, or Threes.
Professor Chris Headleand, Head of Game Design Technology at Staffordshire University, thinks Wordle is getting more attention due to people staying at home during COVID-19 and wanting something entertaining in a really simple way. “A short game a day is a welcome reminder for everyone, encouraging them to take more time off from working from home,” says Headleand.
Simple gameplay
Wordle does not display ads and you are not required to provide personal information. The player must guess a term with 5 important letters and may guess 6 times.
When a user inputs a term and pushes Enter, the proper letters and answer are green. Letters in the answer but in the wrong place will be displayed in yellow; and wrong letters will be gray. After identifying the proper one, the player must combine letters to construct a word in the final row.
Interestingly, Wordle only offers one word per day, which is the same for every player globally. Players can only play once per day, whether the guess is right or wrong. Once done, they can share the results on social media. This section indicates how long the game has been playing and how often the right word was guessed. Instead of the correct keyword, it shows a colored box.
The wave of Wordle ‘fake’ games
After Wordle received great attention, a series of fake apps appeared on the App Store. When searching for the word “Wordle”, hundreds of similar names appear, even using the original application’s name. In Google’s Play Store, there is an application of the same name. But Wardle insists that he did not develop it.
According to Bloomberg, a number of Wordle-based games have also achieved great success. For example, Cravotta’s Wordle hit 40,000 downloads earlier this month on the App Store. According to mobile data and analytics company App Annie. The app is also in the top 10 for charades in 7 countries is number one in Ireland.
Similarly, What Word-Wordle, launched on iOS last week, has reached nearly 20,000 downloads. Appears in the top 10 word puzzle apps on the App Store in 14 countries. However, most of the Wordle-based games have been removed from the app store by Apple.