The World of Wordle Variants

gamedeveloper.com:

Before the year started, if you thought of the biggest game of the year, could you have predicted a small mobile puzzle game? Wordle has taken the world by storm since it was released at the end of 2021, but it really took over in 2022. The game, created by Josh Wardle, was bought by The New York Times just weeks after it became a viral hit. Most simple puzzle games fade from public consciousness after a few weeks, but Wordle has had extraordinary staying power.

The impact of Wordle—which gives you six attempts to deduce a five-letter word each and every day—has been significant, and has caused an influx of daily puzzle games. Various developers have used Wordle as inspiration to create their own games, taking its simple format to infinite places. 

We spoke to some of the developers behind some of Wordle’s biggest variants to explore the craze, and what it all means for the future of web-based games.

What’s behind Wordle’s incredible popularity is the aspect that sets it apart from everything else: shareability. “What made Wordle unusual and successful is the social aspect. It’s a daily challenge – the same game for everybody, every day, which makes it a shared event, and even a little bit of a competition. The real hook, in my opinion, is those shareable replays. I hadn’t seen those before,” explained the creator of Absurdle (who creates under the moniker of "qntm"). 

The game is a self-described “adversarial” version of Wordle: to put it simply, it deliberately tries to avoid giving you the answer, making it as challenging as possible to guess the right word.

Making Absurdle was exciting for pseudonymous developer Qntm, who had created adversarial games in the past like HATETRIS, a Tetris variant that always gives you the