Background

This word scramble game was designed for The Puzzle Society, an exclusive online gaming website that houses games such as The USA TODAY Crossword, Sudoku, Jumble, and more. In 2023 David Steinberg (a puzzle editor) concepted an idea for a new word scramble game. I worked alongside Steinberg, the creative director, games director, and external game-developing team to design the product.

Rules of the game: solve the crossword-style clues by unscrambling the letters you are given. There are six levels in this game and the number of letters you’re tasked to unscramble increase with each level.

The Goal

The goal was to create an intuitive, minimalistic game. There had been two previous design solutions to this game that had been created before I jumped in on design myself. The previous solutions were very illustrative and did not perform well in user testing, so it was imperative that my solution be a minimalistic design focused on the game elements and UX.

I began by creating lofi designs. My goal here was to explore the basic functionality of the game and take the designs back to necessities only. Once I had the necessary design elements narrowed down, only then did I start to play with the look and feel of the game.

Styling and Design

To keep the focus on game play, I decided to incorporate a simple, monochromatic color palate. The color palate changes at each level and moves from calm blues and greens to excitable pinks and reds to signify the change in difficulty.

When designing the logo I wanted to incorporate the multitude of colors throughout game play along with the circular elements that make up the game.

Bonus Round and Score Review Design

If users complete levels 1-6 with 0 mistakes, they will arrive at the bonus round where they have 30 seconds to create as many words as possible for extra points. When designing the bonus round, I wanted it to feel distinctly different from normal game play, so I opted for a dark-mode neon glow aesthetic.

The review screen was designed to capture your entire score breakdown which includes level (stage) answers with the points received and bonus answers with the points (if applicable) received.