Twixt is a daily word puzzle game where players transform one word into another in four moves.
I made this game while working on a different project about teaching English spelling. I was reading about homophones and got struck by how much a homophone can transform the shape of a word, so I started experimenting with little games built on that.<p>I added a few more transforms, anagrams, verb/tense changes, but the answers kept coming out too obvious. I couldn't distort the word enough to make it interesting. The breakthrough was compound pairs. Jumping from one word to another through their compound (sea → horse, via seahorse) really obscures the path and that's when it suddenly got fun and unpredictable.<p>I've been sharing it with friends. I'm in the UK so mostly UK testers, fair warning that a couple of the homophones may lean British.<p>They've been playing daily and seem hooked, so it felt worth posting here. It's one puzzle a day mainly so I actually have time to hand pick puzzles that have a satisfying path. Today's puzzle is on the easy side but they can get really tricky. The name is from 'betwixt', the whole game is about moving between two words. I did clock afterwards that there's a 60s board game with the same name, but they're pretty different things.
Phive is a Gomoku-like web game where players take turns placing and moving pieces adjacent to others, aiming to get five in a row. Available to play with friends or solo at phive.app.
A developer is polishing WordJoy, an idle puzzle game about Chinese character components, focusing on improving early-game feel with clearer combo feedback and faster access to higher rarity pieces.