FubarGames

Image of a Squardle game in progress. The guess currently being typed in is "UNHI...", but as H and U and black and dark gray on the keyboard from the previous guesses, those letters get a darkened square on the board. Text next to the screenshot: If you’re playing on a device with a physical keyboard, it’s a bit too easy to not pay attention to the on-screen keyboard and thus type in a letter that’s already black or dark gray there. This leads to feel bad moments. Also, “Can you avoid pressing the letters that are marked on the keyboard?” isn’t supposed to be the skill-testing part of playing Squardle. For this reason the next big update will include a feature that also temporarily darkens the squares on the board where you’ve typed in black or dark gray letters. Note that you can of course still guess words with those letters. If you dislike this change, it will be optional. So it can be turned off in the settings.

Upcoming quality of life feature for Squardle!

This is currently being tested by my lovely Patreon supporters.

#Squardle #GameDev #WordGames

oh...

I'm sure it'll be fine!

What this means for the upcoming game modes is that as there's no fear of running out of boards mode modes will be freeplay, so you will be able to play them as much as you like.

You can play Squardle for free, and ad free, here: fubargames.se/squardle/

#GameDev #Squardle

The inner squares form a 4x4 magic square but using the start and end letters of 5-letter words as the word list. 4x4 boards are already easier to find, and the list of allowed answers for this 4x4 is bigger than the list for Squardle XS.

Then the outer 4 words only have to match 3 squares each.

Given how rare 5x5 double magic word squares (aka "Weekly Squardle boards") are, I was a bit surprised that there were plenty of valid boards for this bigger board type. Thinking about it a bit more it's not that odd though...

The board for "Squardle 34", (the other mode that's currently being tested by my awesome Patreon supporters), came about because Squardle Distance made me examine if there were some way to make a bigger board what still used 5-letter words.

#Squardle #GameDev

Wordle-like players are much more trained in guessing words with exactly 5 letters, so I also didn't want to force players to guess 6- or 7-letter words while playing the new mode. The new type of hints already added enough complexity.

I've been wanting to try out this sort of hints for quite a while now, but early pen and paper playtesting showed that for it to be fun it required a larger grid than 5x5 squares, and it worked better if that board also didn't have lots of holes in it.

A board for the game mode Squardle Distance 34 with a game in progress. A Squardle board with 34 squares where the two guessed words so far are SNEAK and PEAKS. Instead of the usual red, yellow, and orange Squardle hints with arrows, this board has blue, purple, and brown hints that display numbers in their top left corners. The tiles of the Squardle logo have also been replaced for these types of hints.

Another new game mode just entered the Patreon supporter Beta: Squardle Distance 34!

It completely changes how hints work in Squardle. Instead of getting info about rows and columns for your guessed letters you now get to know how far away from where they should go you've guessed them.

#GameDev

I'm working on a new game mode for #Squardle and I finally got it to a sort of playable state (if I ignore a lot of minor bugs). Here's a game result I just got.

Word found after 10 guesses:
🔳🟪🟦⬜🟩🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟫🟪
🟪⬛🟩🟩🟩🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟫
🟦🟪🟩🟩⬛🟩
🟦🟦🟩🟩🟦🔳

No, those colors are showing correctly. Why do you ask?
#GameDev

Yeah it does! That looks like a bug I briefly introduced while working to add XS. But I *thought* I had already fixed it before release. Are you on v1.912?

A game of Squardle 34 in progress. It has a 6x6 board where the top-left and bottom-right squares are missing. The center 4 rows and columns all have a wall each, dividing them up into groups of 5+1 square. This is to indicate what squares should be solved to form 5-letter words and what squares should only be read in one direction. The player has typed in BOARD as their third guess, but is yet to press enter. They have 8 guesses remaining, indicating that they started with 10.

The 4-letter made mode Squardle XS released on April Fool's. It's been less than 3 weeks, so I'm really happy that to announce that my wonderful Patreon supporters can already start testing out the *next* new game mode! Its currently called "Squardle 34", due to the 34 squares of its board. #GameDev

YouTube video by Scott Stro-solves That was unexpected

If you prefer watching someone else struggle, here are two YouTubers tackling this year's April Fool's Squardle!

@ginjanner.bsky.social : www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzm1...

Scott Stro-solves: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk_7...

Did you miss the special Daily Squardle for April Fool's Day? You can still play it here: fubargames.se/squardle/?s=...

To prevent too much trolling, that link does display a warning that it's an April Fool's board.

You can add &l=es &l=pt-br &l=de or &l=sv to the URL to change language.
#Squardle

Squardle - Wordle squared? Squardle is a 2D Wordle variant where you try to solve a 5x5 grid of 6 words instead of just a single word! This adds red, orange and white squares as possible clues.

Desculpe, perdi sua resposta! De que forma a página muda? Estou supondo que você esteja falando sobre meu jogo fubargames.se/squardle/ e não sobre aquele outro jogo que é escrito com mais um E? Se sim, em qual navegador? Celular ou PC?

Watching players playing your game is of course great, and I'm sure that the *best* way to collect such data is by organizing playtests *before* you release your game. But using let's play videos and such to find issues that are too small to get bug reports can still be valuable!

#GameDev

3/3

This makes it so that you no longer have to release the mouse button before you type the letter for the note. Before this fix, doing so would result in the intended note would be entered as the first letter in a guess.

I only noticed this UI issue by watching players on YouTube and TikTok.

2/x

A gray square from a Squardle board with a blue circle with the letter S in it.

The Squardle Obscure update also included a very subtle quality of life fix to make misclicks while making a note for a square less likely for non-mobile players: It changed the input for starting to make a note from onclick to onmousedown.

#Squardle #GameDev

1/x

I've had very few complaints about English words *not* being an allowed guess. It seems ABJAD isn't in any Scrabble dictionaries (yet) and I *think* the word list is based on some combination of multiple word game dictionaries. So that's probably why.

YouTube video by Scott Stro-solves How brutal was this puzzle?

The update is now live for you to try out!
fubargames.se/squardle/

Here's Scott playing the new Patreon exclusive mode "Squardle Brutally Obscure 25": www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ff1...

The Squardle logo with a dictionary definition for the word "Obscure" under it. Out of the various definitions, "Not readily understood or clearly expressed" and "relatively unknown" have been circled in red pen.

The update for "Squardle Obscure" dropped earlier today!

It brings new configurable game modes where less common words can show up as answers.

You can try them out yourself by clicking "Other game modes" in the main menu here: fubargames.se/squardle/

#Squardle #WebGames #GameDev #Wordle-likes

The logo for Squardle

I intend to have the update live by noon EST tomorrow.

#GameDev #GameDesign #Squardle

fubargames.se/squardle

YouTube video by Scott Stro-solves What happens when we allow PLURALS?

Here's him playing Squardle Obscure 24 with plurals turned on:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LDg...

YouTube video by Scott Stro-solves Let's give this new mode a try!

New game modes drop tomorrow!

Squardle Obscure is all about what happens if you extend the word list of possible answers. It has customization options board size and just how much to extend the list. Until then you can check out Scott Stro-solves preview it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=87Tw...

Once this goes live the 21 and 24 squares versions of Squardle Obscure will be free for anyone, while 25 will be supporter only, as it's too close to the Weekly Bonus boards.

I don't like to paywall my content, but I also don't want to remove the exclusivity of getting extra weekly style boards.

A page with options for configuring and starting Squardle Obscure. It has options for "Board type" (21, 24, or 25 squares), "Max common words" with a dropdown showing the default value of 2, on/off toggles for including "Brutally obscure words" and "Words ending in S" (for regular plurals and verbs in third-person singular present tense).

The Squardle version that's currently being Beta tested by my lovely Patreon supporters just got an update.

They're testing an update that will add "Squardle Obscure" as a game mode. I just added "Squardle Obscure 25" to it.

Here's the new part of the"Other game modes" page for the Beta version: