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Tiled Words 6 Month Update

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Why This Matters

The success of Tiled Words highlights how passion-driven indie game development can resonate with a broad audience, fostering community engagement and continuous improvement. It demonstrates the potential for small teams or individual creators to make a meaningful impact in the gaming industry through dedication and user feedback. For consumers, it offers a daily source of engaging mental exercise and social connection, emphasizing the value of accessible, well-crafted puzzles.

Key Takeaways

Tiled Words: 6 Months of Daily Puzzles

This flies when you're having fun (4 letters)

I've wanted to make games ever since I was a kid. I remember my dad taught me the programming language "Basic" and together we made a simple number guessing game. You would guess a number and it would say "Oh my, too high!" or "Oh no, too low!"

As an adult I've tried making a few different games but I've never had much success. It's hard to find the right combination of ideas to make a fun game. It's even harder to actually finish the game!

Launching Tiled Words

So when I launched Tiled Words I didn't expect much. I thought it would be a fun little project. If I was lucky a few hundred people might play it. I would make puzzles for a month or two and then wind it down as people lost interest and I lost enthusiasm.

To my surprise and delight, the project has surpassed all of my expectations: Thousands of people play every day. It even won an award!

A puzzle a day is a lot of puzzles...

Somehow it's been 6 months since that launch! During that time my wife and I have released a new puzzle every day. (We're going to break 200 puzzles next week.) This is a lot of work but also a lot of fun.

We brainstorm themes while walking the dog and trade clue ideas over lunch. After the baby goes to sleep I turn the clues into a crossword and finish the puzzle. (You can read a little about my puzzle-building tools here though I've made a lot of upgrades since writing that.)

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