So, I decided to make this thing I called a ‘word tour game’. Sounds kinda fancy, maybe? Honestly, I was just messing around, trying to build something a bit different from the usual word puzzles I kept seeing everywhere. You know, something that felt like a little journey.
Getting Started: The “Big Idea”
My first thought was, okay, ‘word tour’. That means you’re ‘traveling’ with words. I pictured it like, you start in one ‘place’ (a word theme, maybe like ‘kitchen items’) and then you find words that connect, leading you to another ‘place’. Seemed simple enough in my head. Boy, was I wrong.
First thing I did was try to gather words. Loads of them. I thought, “I’ll just download a big list!” Easier said than done. Most lists I found were either too academic, full of words no one uses, or just plain weird. I spent a good few days just sifting through stuff, trying to pick out words that actually made sense for a game. It felt like panning for gold, but mostly finding mud.
Then I had to figure out the actual ‘tour’ part. How do you connect these words? I scribbled down a bunch of ideas:
- Maybe you find words within a grid of letters, and each grid is a ‘city’?
- Or you link words by their first and last letters?
- Or words that belong to a specific category, and completing one category ‘unlocks’ the next?
I tried a few mockups on paper. Some were too complicated, others just felt… boring. It was a lot of trial and error, let me tell you. Most of my early ideas got tossed in the bin pretty quick.
Building the Actual Thing (Sort Of)
I’m no programming genius, so I kept the tech super simple. Just some basic stuff to display words and check answers. I wasn’t aiming for flashy graphics or anything. In fact, I went for a really plain look. Black text, white background. Maybe a splash of one color if I felt adventurous. My artistic skills are, let’s say, limited. So, minimalism was my friend.
The tricky bit was creating the ‘levels’ or ‘tours’. I decided on a theme-based approach. So, a ‘tour’ of ‘Animals’, then maybe a ‘tour’ of ‘Countries’. For each theme, I had to curate a specific set of words. Then, I needed a way for the player to find them. I settled on a kind of word search, but with a twist: the words had to be found in a certain order to complete the ‘journey’ for that theme.
This connecting part was a real headache. Making sure the word progression felt logical, or at least not completely random, took ages. I’d set up a tour, play through it, and realize, “Nah, this feels clunky,” and then go back and rejig the whole thing. I remember spending one entire weekend just on getting three ‘tours’ to feel right. My coffee consumption went through the roof.
There were moments I nearly just scrapped the whole project. You know, when you’re staring at the screen, and it just feels like nothing is working, and you think, “Why am I even doing this?” But then, I’d take a break, come back, and tweak one little thing, and suddenly, a tiny part would click. Those small wins kept me going.
What Came Out of It
Eventually, I got a basic version up and running. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot. It was probably buggy in ways I hadn’t even discovered yet. But it worked. You could start a ‘tour’, find the words, and move on to the next. And you know what? It was actually kind of satisfying to play my own little creation, flaws and all.
It’s funny, I didn’t set out to change the world with this game. It was more of a personal challenge, something to tinker with. And that’s what I got. A simple, no-frills word game that I made, from start to finish. It taught me a lot about just sticking with something, even when it’s frustrating. And sometimes, the stuff you build just for yourself, without any big expectations, ends up being the most rewarding. It’s a good reminder that not everything needs to be a massive, complicated project. Sometimes, just making a small thing work is good enough.
