Icewords is a digital word game targeted at mobile devices. It adapts the mechanics of Spelling Brawl for single-player play. The player is a penguin on an iceberg, moving about by spelling words. Various winter themed enemies regularly spawn and the player must force them into the waters surround the iceberg. If left unchecked, the enemies will wipe the letters from the iceberg, leaving the player unable to move – or they will simply push the player off themselves. As the game goes on, the iceberg will shrink, increasing the difficulty.
Icewords is meant to be played as an arcade game where the objective is to get the highest score possible. There is no way to actually win the game. The target audience is word game fans who want a phone game to pass the time.
In the process of designing Icewords, I learned some useful things about adapting multiplayer games to single player games. In the absence of a human opponent, a designer has the freedom to give the players abilities that could otherwise be unbalancing. For example, in Spelling Brawl you cannot push or throw an enemy onto your path, because if you could then you could simply bull-rush them off the stage after throwing them. But enemies in Icewords are meant to be relatively easy to defeat, so I realized that I could allow this (and also that it was more intuitive to the players that it should be possible).
I think my most important realization was that I did not need to drive the game to a conclusion in the same way that I would in a board game. Spelling Brawl is designed to constantly push the game towards a conclusion in order to avoid prolonged stalemate, because in board games players expect the game to end – and count on it ending within the allotted time of their session. This is not the case for a single player computer game, especially an arcade-style game where the player plays to continue rather than to end the game. This forced me to rethink many of my design choices.
In Spelling Brawl, letters are limited; Icewords is much more generous. The player generates 1 letter for free no matter what each turn, and if they run out of space in their hand extra letters overflow to the board. This is also necessary because there are more enemies, causing the letters to be used up faster.
In place of the Second Wind mechanic, I added a more powerful “Refreeze” ability which randomly adds letters to every space on the board. Initially, Refreeze was once per game (like Second Wind), but since I no longer needed to drive the game to a conclusion, I changed it so that enemy kills refill the Refreeze ability so that the player can use it again. This gives them a powerful panic button that can be recharged over time.
Icewords is available for purchase here: