Wordlewas a breakout hit in 2021 and continues to see massive popularity. Its success has inspired a small army of programmers to try their hands at designing similar games, or clones. One only needs to search Google Play or the iOS App Store to finda plethora of theseWordleclones.
While many of theseWordlespinoffs may be considered knockoffs, many others attempt to add their own unique spin to the formula. The recently releasedBookdlefalls into the latter category, being a literature-themed puzzle game based on Josh Wardle’s popular formula.
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Created by Hannah Park and Chase Wackerfuss,Bookdleis open about its status as aWordleclone, acknowledging as much in its “how to play” section. Players have six chances to guess afive-letter word, just likeWordle.It highlights correct letters in green, with yellow marking letters that appear somewhere else in the word. However, its unique selling point is that all of the words are literature-related. These include the name of authors and characters, as well as titles of books and poems.
As with Wordle,Bookdleencourages players to share their scores on social media. Of course, the literature theme means that the game may not have the broad appeal of the one that inspired it. While someWordleanswers can easily be somewhat obscure, Park and Wackerfuss explicitly designedBookdleas a game for avid readers. Still, it’s a fun idea for anyone interested in a more literary-inclined challenge. Those people can check it out by visiting the game’s websiteHERE.
As stated above,Bookdleis one of many similar puzzle games based on theWordleformula. Two of the more famous examples includeAbsurdleandEvil Wordle, where the game picks a secret word based on player guesses, with the aim of dragging the game out as long as possible. There are alsogames likeAntiwordleandSurvivle, where players must avoid guessing the word. These are just a few examples of the quickly evolving genre ofWordleclones and fan-made spinoffs.
Of course, it’s a genre that may be in some amount of danger followingWordle’sacquisition by the New York Times. The newspaper recentlymoved to shut down theWordle Archive, which was a third-party web application that allowed players to attempt previous wordle Puzzles. While other similar apps still exist, it stands to reason the NYT will likely attempt to shut these down as well. Hopefully, the same thing doesn’t happen to themed variants likeBookdle.
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