You can play Tiled Words for free on any device here: https://tiledwords.com

Tiled Words merges tile-placing board game mechanics with crosswords. You rotate and rearrange tiles to find clues and rebuild a broken crossword. Every day there will be a new, hand-crafted, themed puzzle for you to solve.

Today I'll be showcasing the game at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo with the Portland Indie Game Squad, so if you're in the neighborhood, come say hi!

The game is web based: the graphics are SVGs, animations are powered by CSS, and Vue/Nuxt are used to power templating, reactivity, and routing. Most of the complex logic lives in TypeScript modules.

It's been a long time in the making. I started the first version in the Summer of 2024. The game was originally inspired by board games like Patchwork. I wanted to make a digital game where you placed tiles on a board. I explored layering a few different game mechanics on top of that but none of my prototypes felt fun to play, so I shelved the idea around September 2024. (At its most complex, I was developing a deck-building game about planting flowers to heal a broken land.)

This July while on a hike with my wife I had an idea: what if I put letters on the tiles and let you rotate and place them to build words. I whipped up a prototype and actually enjoyed playing it. Even better, my friends thought it was fun too. I was convinced to keep going when I shared it online and got a lot of positive feedback from strangers. I've gotten feedback from dozens of players via a feedback form, and have over 250 signed up to be notified on launch.

It's been a lot of fun to design and develop, and I enjoy working with my wife to build new puzzles. (She's better at thinking of the clues than I am!)

This game has been a labor of love. Please share it with your friends and check back tomorrow for a new puzzle!