Word Wipe

{Word Wipe} Project Report

1. The Concept

Word Wipe is a one-thumb word puzzle: hold a letter, drag through touching tiles, release a real English word, and chase a score target before the clock hits zero.

The hook is speed plus discovery. The board hides 3, 4, 5, 6+ letter words in every direction — up, down, across, diagonal, and bent paths. There is no row quota. Time is the only round limit. Hit the score target and you can keep playing until the timer ends; when it ends, that score decides WIN or TIME’S UP.

It is built for a phone-sized session: a first-run hand tutorial on Level 1, three tools (Shuffle, Bomb, Hint), and a difficulty ramp that gets a little harder each level.

2. The Stack

No framework, no build step, no server.

• HTML (index.html) — menu, play HUD, board, tutorial overlay, pause / result / confirm
• CSS (styles.css) — mobile layout, tiles, path glow, hand demo, message toast
• JavaScript (script.js) — board, input, scoring, levels, tools, save, Web Audio
• Dictionary (dictionary.js) — English word list for validation and hints
• Browser localStorage — best score, unlocked level, mute, tutorial seen
• Web Audio API — tap / valid / invalid / win tones (no sound files)

Open index.html in Chrome, Edge, or Safari. That is the whole pipeline.

3. The 1 Day Sprint (+ polish pass)

Morning (Hours 1–3):

Locked the fantasy and the loop. Menu → Play → Result. Swipe adjacent letters, 3+ letter words, score vs a target, beat the clock.

Shipped the first playable board (6×6), timer, score bar, combo, shuffle / bomb / hint stubs, pause, and a result screen. Copy settled on LEVEL COMPLETED and WIN instead of generic “clear / brilliant” language. Difficulty was planned as a smooth ramp: time down, target up, board 6 → 7 → 8, letters easy → medium → hard — not a 800-to-2000 score jump on Level 2.

Afternoon (Hours 4–6):

Turned “swipe letters” into the game people expect.

• Removed the ROWS objective. Players stay in the round until time is gone.
• Seeded mixed-length words (3–6+) going up, down, and across, not only one horizontal row.
• Drag paths can turn (V-shapes and diagonals), not only straight lines.
• Invalid words no longer shake the tiles; a toast explains why.
• Level 1 new-user intro: a glowing word plus a dragging hand, skippable with GOT IT.
• English-only UI (Khmer helper lines removed).

The Finish Line (Hour 7-8):

Made the last 20% feel like a product, not a prototype.

• Hint actually works 3 times per level (stale timers and stolen taps were eating uses 2 and 3).
• Every level starts with Shuffle 4, Bomb 1, Hint 3.
• “NOT IN WORD LIST” sits on a dark bar so it reads on white tiles.
• Dictionary expanded so everyday English (BYE, HELLO, KEYBOARD, THANKS) clears instead of bouncing.
• README and this report written so someone else can open the folder and play.

Polish (Aug 10):

Playtest pass on a phone-sized viewport: tutorial hand alignment, button hitboxes vs the board, toast contrast, tool counts that match the HUD, and result copy (LEVEL COMPLETED / WIN vs TIME’S UP). Cache-bust query strings on CSS/JS so testers are not stuck on an old file.

4. The Roadblocks

• Straight-line drag vs Boggle paths. Preferring up/down first made vertical swipes better and killed bent words. Fix: if the next tile is adjacent in any of 8 directions, add it; only interpolate when the finger skips.
• Hint used once, then died. The first hint’s cleanup timer wiped the second glow, and pointer capture on nearby tiles ate the HINT tap. Clear timers on each hint / board redraw; ignore pointerdown on the tool dock.
• “Correct English” vs a tiny custom list. BYE highlighted green (selected) but never popped. Selection color is not validation. Needed a real dictionary file, while keeping a smaller common list only for seeding the board.
• Tutorial code existed and never ran. Wired it to Level 1 for unseen players, paused the clock, and let a successful demo word actually clear.
• Board messages were cream text on white tiles. Unreadable. Dark pill toast fixed it in one CSS pass.

5. Key Takeaways

Ship the verb first (hold, drag, release), then the clock, then the dictionary. Players judge a word game on whether the path follows their finger and whether a word they know is allowed — not on how many systems you listed on a slide.

Tools that say “3” must work three times. HUD numbers that drop on later levels without a design reason feel like a bug. If the round is about time, do not also require rows.

A first-run hand on a real glowing word beats a wall of instructions. Keep in-game copy in one language.

My final thought:

Word Wipe is small on purpose. One file to open, one gesture to learn, one clock to beat. The sprint was not “add more modes.” It was make the swipe honest, the dictionary fair, the tools reliable, and the first minute obvious. That is the whole game.