Building WorDice: Bringing a Classic Game to the Web

What happens when you take a classic dice-and-word game and turn it into a global, daily challenge? I built WorDice, a 3-minute daily word game my family loved, and put it on the web. Each day, you get a set of 10 letters (like rolling dice), and your goal is to form the highest-scoring words possible before the timer runs out.

Building it was a good learning experience in adapting a physical game, testing, and leveraging Generative AI.

Making the Game

Taking an offline game and translating it to a browser takes some effort. Studying existing games helped, but the most important part of the process was playtesting and getting feedback.

For example, it took us a while to figure out exactly when to trigger the “Bonus Mode.” In the physical version, you get multiple turns, but WorDice is a one-turn-per-day game. We also debated whether to include a bonus failure penalty (which the offline game has). We also spent time refining the colors, fonts, and themes so that the game is accessible and easy to use for players of all ages.

Building with Generative AI

As someone who balances a day job and parenting, finding time for a side project is difficult. Generative AI was well suited for my fragmented timeline.

It was particularly good at utilizing existing frameworks and writing boilerplate code. But beyond that, it was incredible for refactoring logic, making it easy to quickly iterate on the game rule challenges I mentioned above.

However, it was not a “set and forget” or one-shot experience. Being a software engineer was useful to get the outcome I wanted and reach the level of polish I cared about. I was able to guide the process, notice issues, and prevent unproductive loops. The tools significantly improved my productivity, but the direction had to come from me.

As a side note, building WorDice this way reminded me of the point-and-click game building tools from the mid-90s, and I had a similar level of excitement using them.

Bringing Us Together

At the end of the day, the best outcome has been that we now share our results daily among a small group. It is a great thing to see it bring us some joy and allow us to connect over a shared daily puzzle.

Game Features

The game is designed to be simple and accessible. I intended to keep the focus on the players:

• Global Daily Puzzle: Everyone gets to play the same random daily challenge. You can have a friendly competition with your friends and family at your own pace.
• Privacy First: There is no account sign-up, no trackers, and no ads. Your progress is saved entirely on your device and it operates fully offline.
• Fast & Responsive: It is a fun game that works fast on the web and on mobile devices (Android, iPhone, and others).

I invite you to try it out! Visit wordice.org, play today’s puzzle—and see if you can outscore your friends. Have fun!