Deep Dive: The many reasons why Wordle is superior to its many clones
Wordle has taken the internet by storm with millions of people playing the word guessing game daily. There are already thousands of clones in the wild but none of them have achieved the same level of success. New York Times recently bought Wordle instead of any of the numerous clones, some of which have more features or even their own app. Why is that? Why are the clones having such a hard time surpassing the original?
Let’s take a deep dive into the answer.
Gameplay
The most important part of any game is to have fun. What makes Wordle so great is that the words are easy enough to guess. They’re words that you might use in conversations. They’re words that are taught in school. They are the common usage and spelling of the word. Many of the clones will grab an online dictionary (when not copying Wordle’s) and use that as a seeder. The result is that you end up with words like aahed which was the first 5 letter word I spotted in one of those dictionaries. Raise your hand if you know what aahed means? My computer squiggled it but it’s a word in the dictionary. It’s the past participle of the word “Ahh” in case you’re wondering. Congrats, you just aahed!
Should aahed be a word on the list? There are thousands of other words like this in the dictionary. For Wordle to work, the words need to be far more common for the average user to guess them, this isn’t Scrabble. You don’t want to cause unnecessary frustration for your users.
Scarcity and limitations
There’s only one Wordle a day just like there is only one NYT crossword a day. This level of scarcity means that you have something to look forward to the next morning when you’re having your cup of joe. It also works better for conversations. “Honey, did you do today’s Wordle yet?” “How many guesses did it take you”? “Oh no, I lost and ended my 8-day streak”. You get the same word as everyone else. Everyone is on the same playing field.
Hello Wordl is a popular clone of the game. It lets you do more than one word per day. Words aren’t limited to 5 letters, they can be anywhere from 4 to 11 letters, you get to decide (good luck figuring out an 11 letter word quickly). While on paper these extra features sound great, after you play it a bunch of times, what’s next? There’s no sense of accomplishment or progress. There’s no need or desire to share anything other than the initial time to let people know that the game exists. The virality is lost in these clones. The game does have a daily word option, but it’s not as sharable since it’s not the focal point of the game.
Design, UI, and UX
Wordle’s design is magnificent. It’s the definition of simple design. It has everything you need and nothing else. The letters are big. There’s a lot of breathing room. You can use your physical keyboard or the on-screen one. There’s a dark mode. There’s a high contrast mode for color blind folks. It works perfectly on mobile, tablets, and desktops alike. There’s a subtle animation highlighting the box that was just typed in. When you press enter, the letters reveal your results one at a time building up a little anticipation. When you refresh the page after you’ve completed the day, there’s a nice animation showing your results. None of the clones I tested had this level of detail.
It’s also crazy fast. The whole game is hosted on one static HTML page. There’s no database or APIs. You can right-click and save the page and it will work on your computer.
When you want to share your results, you don’t have a Facebook or Twitter popup. Instead, it just copies all the emojis and white space characters that made up your play session. It’s clever. It’s simple. It’s brilliant.
Many of the clones have an unpolished look to them. Hello Wordl feels cramped on my 27-inch screen. Seven Wordls adds some extra features like a timer which doesn’t automatically convert to minutes when it hits 60. Sweardle doesn’t allow for keyboard typing. The buttons never look quite right either. The browser support isn’t always the best. Mobile doesn’t work on some of the clones.
Wordle’s attention to detail is exceptional and, from what I’ve seen, unmatched by the clones.
Conclusion
Wordle is the perfect example of simplicity done right. Just because something is simple doesn’t mean it was easy to build. I’m sure Mr Wardle spent a good amount of time thinking of all these little details. Well done sir.
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