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I'm still having a lot of fun releasing daily puzzles for my game Tiled Words: https://tiledwords.com https://tiledwords.com It just won an award! It was award

I'm still having a lot of fun releasing daily puzzles for my game Tiled Words: https://tiledwords.com https://tiledwords.com It just won an award! It was awarded Players' Choice out of 700 daily web games at the Playlin awards: https://playlin.io/news/announcing-the-2025-playlin-awards-winners/ https://playlin.io/news/announcing-the-2025-playlin-awards-w... Right now around 3,500 people play every day which kind of blows my mind! It's free, web-based, and responsive. It was inspired by board games and crosswords. I've been troubleshooting some iOS performance issues, working on user accounts, and getting ready to launch player-submitted puzzles. It's slow going though because I have limited free time and making the puzzles is time consuming! Here's an article with more info about the award: https://cogconnected.com/2026/03/tiled-words-crowned-the-players-choice-award-at-the-playlin-awards-2025/ https://cogconnected.com/2026/03/tiled-words-crowned-the-pla...

suzdude 7mo ago
I don't play every day, but I've been a big fan of Tiled and showed it to a number of other folks. Thank you so much for keeping it going!
- paulhebert 7mo ago
  Thanks for playing and sharing!
jasondigitized 7mo ago
How did you go from 0 users to 3,500? Genuinely curious how people get their games off the ground.
- paulhebert 7mo ago
  It's been a gradual process over the last 5.5 months. Here are some of the things that worked for me: - I applied to showcase the game at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo with the Portland Indie Game Squad. They accepted me so I was able to showcase it at the expo for a day. This got me some players right off the bat - I shared it on HN, Reddit, Mastodon, etc. - The website Thinky Games wrote an article about it - The YouTube channel Cracking the Cryptic shared it which got a lot of new players. More recently a couple of other YouTubers (Timotab and Stro Solves) have been posting videos regularly - I link to it from my blog, and this unrelated rant went semi-viral in web dev circles: https://paulmakeswebsites.com/writing/shadcn-radio-button/ https://paulmakeswebsites.com/writing/shadcn-radio-button/ - Winning the award gave me more visibility and players I've also tried using things like Instagram and Discord but haven't had much luck there. I don't really get how those platforms work. To be honest I'm not great at marketing. I've just been experimenting and seeing what works. --- I would say the most important thing is the game itself: - I've worked hard to gather feedback and incorporate it into the gameplay. - I focus on keeping the puzzles fresh and striking the right difficulty level. (Challenging but something most people can do in 10 minutes.) - I built a sharing feature that ~300 or so people use a day I think all my marketing would have been useless if people didn't like the game and want to play again and share it with their friends.
  - vintagedave 7mo ago
    I remember seeing this! It was cool, and I will remember to play it more. Re creating puzzles, does this mean you have to manually do them one per day? Is there a way to automate them ahead of time (as in have an app generate a bunch of puzzles you can pick from or tweak)?
    - paulhebert 7mo ago
      This is something I’ve been grappling with. I’ve automated parts of the process. Once I have the words and clues I can autogenerate crosswords and pick the best one. I’m hesitant to automate the creation of the theme, words, and clues though. I worry that the quality would go down but there may be some opportunities to speed up brainstorming there. I’ve been noodling on this.
bengale 7mo ago
That's a lot of fun, good work.
- paulhebert 7mo ago
  Thanks!
linsomniac 7mo ago
My wife and I just finished our morning Tiled Words and Bracket City. It's become part of our morning routine. Thanks for it, it's a lot of fun!
- paulhebert 7mo ago
  That’s awesome, thanks! Bracket City is great! Definitely one of my favorites
tclancy 7mo ago
I think I am getting close to a 100 day streak. Thanks!
- paulhebert 7mo ago
  Awesome, thanks for playing!!
abraxas 7mo ago
Than you for Tiled Words. It quickly became a morning ritual to complete the daily puzzle. I wish there were more mobile games that are not obnoxious. The idea and the execution are top notch. My only concern is that there is a buzzing noise if the app is in the foreground and some audio is playing in the background. This is on pixel 9a
- paulhebert 7mo ago
  Thanks for playing! Oh interesting, thanks for the bug report! I hadn’t heard that one yet. I’ll look into it
  - abraxas 7mo ago
    You're welcome, thanks for making it! The noise is intermittent and may simply be CPU/GPU overload and the resulting sound distortions. But it could be something else. It is quite reproducible on my phone.
    - paulhebert 7mo ago
      It may be related to the library I'm using for sound effects

suzdude 7mo ago

I don't play every day, but I've been a big fan of Tiled and showed it to a number of other folks. Thank you so much for keeping it going!

paulhebert 7mo ago
Thanks for playing and sharing!

jasondigitized 7mo ago

How did you go from 0 users to 3,500? Genuinely curious how people get their games off the ground.

paulhebert 7mo ago
It's been a gradual process over the last 5.5 months. Here are some of the things that worked for me: - I applied to showcase the game at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo with the Portland Indie Game Squad. They accepted me so I was able to showcase it at the expo for a day. This got me some players right off the bat - I shared it on HN, Reddit, Mastodon, etc. - The website Thinky Games wrote an article about it - The YouTube channel Cracking the Cryptic shared it which got a lot of new players. More recently a couple of other YouTubers (Timotab and Stro Solves) have been posting videos regularly - I link to it from my blog, and this unrelated rant went semi-viral in web dev circles: https://paulmakeswebsites.com/writing/shadcn-radio-button/ https://paulmakeswebsites.com/writing/shadcn-radio-button/ - Winning the award gave me more visibility and players I've also tried using things like Instagram and Discord but haven't had much luck there. I don't really get how those platforms work. To be honest I'm not great at marketing. I've just been experimenting and seeing what works. --- I would say the most important thing is the game itself: - I've worked hard to gather feedback and incorporate it into the gameplay. - I focus on keeping the puzzles fresh and striking the right difficulty level. (Challenging but something most people can do in 10 minutes.) - I built a sharing feature that ~300 or so people use a day I think all my marketing would have been useless if people didn't like the game and want to play again and share it with their friends.
- vintagedave 7mo ago
  I remember seeing this! It was cool, and I will remember to play it more. Re creating puzzles, does this mean you have to manually do them one per day? Is there a way to automate them ahead of time (as in have an app generate a bunch of puzzles you can pick from or tweak)?
  - paulhebert 7mo ago
    This is something I’ve been grappling with. I’ve automated parts of the process. Once I have the words and clues I can autogenerate crosswords and pick the best one. I’m hesitant to automate the creation of the theme, words, and clues though. I worry that the quality would go down but there may be some opportunities to speed up brainstorming there. I’ve been noodling on this.

bengale 7mo ago

That's a lot of fun, good work.

paulhebert 7mo ago
Thanks!

linsomniac 7mo ago

My wife and I just finished our morning Tiled Words and Bracket City. It's become part of our morning routine. Thanks for it, it's a lot of fun!

paulhebert 7mo ago
That’s awesome, thanks! Bracket City is great! Definitely one of my favorites

tclancy 7mo ago

I think I am getting close to a 100 day streak. Thanks!

paulhebert 7mo ago
Awesome, thanks for playing!!

abraxas 7mo ago

Than you for Tiled Words. It quickly became a morning ritual to complete the daily puzzle. I wish there were more mobile games that are not obnoxious. The idea and the execution are top notch. My only concern is that there is a buzzing noise if the app is in the foreground and some audio is playing in the background. This is on pixel 9a

paulhebert 7mo ago
Thanks for playing! Oh interesting, thanks for the bug report! I hadn’t heard that one yet. I’ll look into it
- abraxas 7mo ago
  You're welcome, thanks for making it! The noise is intermittent and may simply be CPU/GPU overload and the resulting sound distortions. But it could be something else. It is quite reproducible on my phone.
  - paulhebert 7mo ago
    It may be related to the library I'm using for sound effects