I've been quite taken with a particular style of casual, "clever" game that rose to prominence during The COVID Years but still has a charm that keeps me visiting almost daily:
- Wordle (the original, and the "rags to riches" ideal)
- Quordle (a beautiful initial implementation, albeit reduced now)
- Heardle (recently escaped from the clutches of Spotify)
- Connections at the New York Times
There are a heap of common factors amongst these games (and I'll optimistically include my own Cardle here too) that I think make feel so "nice":
- Rejection of obvious monetization strategies
- Feel resolutely mobile-first in UI/UX (large elements, zero scrolling!)
- Delightful levels of polish (micro-interactions, animation etc)
- Focused; not just a Single *Page* App, but almost a Single *Pane* App
Of course there's also the little matter of having a great idea with suitably nice mechanics and frequently creativity (Connections I think excels in having creative, challenging content by Wyna Liu that is pitched just *chef's kiss*) but I think there are still areas of the word-association, letter-oriented game landscape to be explored.
For this next one I also will be trying out Svelte after reading the superb "Things you forgot (or never knew) because of React" by Josh Collinsworth which very nicely articulated what feels a little "ick" about React development these days, and paints a very nice picture on what's on the other side of the fence. The scoped-styling and in-built animation abilities in particular seem like a perfect fit for this kind of app.
Now I just need an idea...
