Creating a Crossword game in GDevelop - Part 1 - The Idea

So, full disclosure, I do not have a background in game development although I am familiar with coding due to my background in computers. I really wanted to develop a simple game someday and also publish an app on Google playstore. GDevelop allowed me to do both. This series takes you on my journey from just trying to explore the platform to seeing the potential of what I tried and creating a full fledged game that is now published on playstore. I am well aware and I'm sure you will realise it too that the game could have been developed in a much more efficient way.

It is also important to point out that the crossword game I developed was designed for my local language. I'll be explaining the process for an English crossword in this series though for simplicity.

The idea was simple. Crosswords have been around for a long time and are also available on mobile devices via. mobile apps. But that was not the case for crosswords in my native language. So I wanted to build a crossword game that elder folks can enjoy and the young folks can use to learn new words all on the go.

I had the following in mind when I started developing the game:

• The UI and its elements had to be intuitive and visually easy on the eyes for the elder people.
• The game should have re-usable elements to save time on coding since I planned to include a considerable number of crossword puzzles in first release.
• The design should be such that will enable me to easily add new crossword puzzles in subsequent releases.
• There should be a way to introduce ads that the users can watch and get some kind of reward that they can use in solving the crossword.
• I should also include instructions on how to play the game in case the UI is not intuitive enough.

In the second post of this series I will go through the game's design and its elements as implemented in GDevelop.