Own Android game for the night⁠⁠

I have long wanted to write a simple toy on my phone for myself, and so that I could show my friends and poke them.

I've been in mobile development for quite a long time, so I understand how to do it well, but what to do… That's always a problem. It usually works like this: there are people who say: "Let's do this in order to do something." Then the designers come and say: "It should look like this." You sit down and do it. Quite often, thoughts from the category slip through my head:

Why don't I make my own app?

Why do I need all these intermediate links?

I want to decide for myself how and what

And then, full of energy and fervor, you sit down and... and that's it. You're stuck with the fact that you don't have any ideas. Have you got an idea? Then you realize that you are no designer. It comes to the realization that probably all these people are there for a reason. You go back to work and do someone else's project further, and so on in a circle.

A few days ago, I went to bed and thought that too often lately I see friends playing games like "guess what the word is in N attempts", like the yellow bank had a game of "5 letters" or something like that. And then I realized that it doesn't cost anything to make it. I immediately took the laptop and started.

The plan for writing the application was something like this:

To find an open access file with nouns in English, from which, in fact, the words will be taken

Write your own keyboard is the main widget in this application in terms of complexity

Write a form for entering words

Add an element of monetization (of course, where without it)

Make it publicly available

So, let's go. Stage 1 was pretty quick and painless, but with its own jokes. I found a list of words consisting of about 1800 nouns, but as it turned out later, there are a lot of spaces in it and quite often there are no obvious words. But okay, it's good for a start.

Let's move on. To write a keyboard, you need to understand the condition of the letters. In general, it is enough to look at a couple of examples and conclude that there may be 3 states:

We have not tried this letter yet

We tried, but there is no such thing in the hidden word

We tried and yes, there is such a letter

Choosing a color palette. Personally, I really like how salad and orange look on a gray background. So let's do that. Blue will also look good with them. For the keyboard, we choose light green as the main color. Using the main SPACE button, we will check the entered word. If we don't guess the letter, we remove the outline, if we guess, we add colors to the background. It turns out something like that, it even looks good.

Let's move on. A form for entering words. We also don't think for a long time, each letter is in a separate cell, when checking the word, first check that all the letters are entered, then check that the entered word is in our dictionary, and finally, one letter at a time, compare what the user entered with our hidden (randomly taken from the list) word. According to the state, each cell for a letter can be in one of the following states:

Not checked yet

There is no such letter in the word

The letter is there, but it is not in its place

Yes, you guessed it! Exactly this letter and exactly here!

In general, we will take all the same colors, but add a little more gray for the letters that do not suit us. Look, it turns out something like this:

It would seem that the game is ready. But no, let's add some information for the user, it's not obvious to everyone what these colors mean at all. In the process of writing, by the way, the name just popped into my head and I left the initial version unchanged: "Worder World". What do you think? Like WORDer -Wonder, you know. We got distracted, so we add the info button and some explanations in the form of a pop-up. It turns out like this:

So, how will my toy differ from most others? I have a dictionary, but am I really going to use only 5-letter words in it? And why? Let's add the ability for the user to choose how long a word he wants. We add a start screen with a choice of length. From 5 to 8 should be enough. And here is the ideal place where you can get a profit. 5, 6 - for free, if you want more difficult, pay)) Why not, and anyway it's my toy, I want it that way and that's it.
It turns out like this. The store's tab may get a life in the future, if you have any ideas what to add there, write.

The final touch is to add a startup loading screen with simple animation and a little advertising (Although just a little bit, and why not, anyway, earnings from it are measured in tenths of cents). Let's make popups about winning or losing, and in general that's it, the game is ready.

Well, let's go give our best in the store. There is a development account, there is a name, we will roll up a description, we will make a screenshot, we will fill in the necessary molds, we will go for moderation. What's the time? It's been 3 hours, and the inner owner of his own toy is happy) Thank you all, if you suddenly want to see - here is a link. if you find words that are not in my not very large dictionary, or you have come up with something cool you can add there - write, we will do it!

And how are your nights going?
Later, I added a new mode with passing levels and achievements to complete🏆