A word-sorting Unity game with unlimited rounds and custom difficulty modes
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Story:
My friends and I regularly play New York Times word games, especially Wordle and Connections. While we enjoy playing, we always want more puzzles but the NYT Games have a daily limit. During winter break, I wanted to solve this problem and I decided to build Common Threads, an unlimited version of the New York Times Connections, as I received more feedback.
Around the same time, Unity 6 had just come out, so I wanted to try it out. I had previously learned Unity 2023 and C# through my Introductory Game Design Class and this was my chance to apply the skills I had learned. For the core logic, I relied on my previous Computer Science classes. To program the animations at a speed a human can observe, I learned about coroutines and IEnumerator.
For the graphics, I used Canva to design the hexagonal shapes and the logos associated. While I kept the traditional 4x4 grid, I wanted to add my own twists with other features such as a timer, and the lives being heart-shaped. I worked on creating a visually appealing game, relying on my previous Art classes.
Reflection
Building Common Threads taught me about combining design and engineering to create a good product. I not only had to program the game but design a visually appealing UI, and the programmed animations such as “shuffle” and “submit” were a blend of both. Once I reached an initial version, I shared it with my family and friends to see how users felt about my game.
One of the core issues I received feedback was readability. To solve these issues, I modified the color scheme to be more contrasting colors and settled on a purple-based color scheme. I continued to refine my shades to complement each other.
In addition, I had gotten complaints about difficulty, so I added different game modes from easy to hard. The feedback I received from my users and the solutions I implemented ended up being one the distinctive parts of my game.