- Bug fixes - 1.10 - 27 May 2026
- Made "Ultramarathon" mode's final score attainable without having to make a game-breaking build - Added a number of user requested words to the dictionary, including DOOMER, WEEBS, PALEO, LOWKEY, and JACKALOPE - Fixed bug with the modifier "If the word begins with A, multiply the Final Score by 2 (Letter changes every round)", where the short and long descriptions could get out of sync, causing confusion for the player. - Fixed issue with the modifier "Fill all the additional tile slots on the board, for the first word of each round", when selling the modifier "Add an additional tile slot to the board". Behaviour is now more in line with player expectation. - Fixed issue where some modifiers could give you points, even if a Special Round or Modifier dictates that you'll score zero
- Bug fixes - 1.09 - 19 August 2025
- Fixed bug where hitting "Play Again" after losing a game would let you resume to your pre-lose state - Fixed visual bug when resuming a save game in High Contrast mode with Locked Tiles - Improved readability of highlighted words during special rounds (i.e "Plays" and "Refresh") - Fixed bug involving Modifiers that add extra tile slots to the board
- Bug fixes - 1.08 - 4 August 2025
Hey! Here are this week's bug fixes Word Play now works with touchscreen Windows devices Modifier "If two adjacent tiles share the same letter, both score 3x" now works with Mirror Tiles Fixed issue with modifier "Add 10 Bonus Points during Special Rounds" Glass duplicates now duplicate the tile's upgraded score Improved updating issues with Mirror and Exclamation tiles Improved visual clarity of "Double the Bonus Points rewards for spelling longer words" "When you sell any other Modifier, add to your Play count instead of Refreshes" changed to Legendary rarity Improved visual clarity of special tiles in the Letter Bag, including when using high contrast accessibility mode Fixed bug with dragging a tile from the submission queue when using the Upgrade "Lock a tile for eight submissions. When it unlocks, permanently double its score" Clarified the Modifier "Add 5 Bonus Points for each un…
- Bug fixes - 1.07 - 23 July 2025
Just a few today! Fixed bug with "Swap a tile with a common Consonant from the Letter Bag" Fixed bug with "If two adjacent tiles share the same letter, both score 3x" Stopped game from playing mouse-over sound effects if it is not the active window Fixed issue with "Word ends with" Modifier and Exclamation tiles
- Bug fixes and balance changes - 22 July 2025
Hi! Thanks for your continued Word Play bug reports. Here's what's changed in 1.06: New: Added more words to the Word Play dictionary Added tutorial message if player clicks, but doesn't hold, on refresh button Diamond Tiles are de-prioritised when typing on the keyboard Re-balanced: Buffed Modifier "Add 3 Bonus Points. Increases by 1 when you add a new tile to the Letter Bag". Now +2 on new tile. Buffed "If two adjacent tiles share the same letter, both score double", to both score triple Buffed I, E, and O, and Letter Pair challenges. Now +4, and lock at +40. Buffed "Add 1 Bonus Points for each unused Upgrade" to be +5 Buffed "Increases by 2 whenever you re-roll the perks" Modifier, to +5 Certain Special Rounds (including Special Tiles Nullified) are less likely to appear Fixed: Fixed bug with "If the last word of the round starts with a Vowel, the perk screen will have four perks to…
- Bug fixes - 1.05 - 18 July 2025
One last patch for the week! Thanks again for your bug reports If you have more than one modifier that lets you refresh for free, only one will be used up Fixed issue with adding phantom tiles to the letter bag when playing with a controller / Steamdeck Improved typing support when cycling through multiple letters Improved typing support for ING and ERS tiles - use Shift + I and Shift + E to input them Removed automatic typing support for wildcards (use 8 / * to insert manually), to reduce confusion Changed some random elements to favour player Fixed issue with saving and loading Special Round "Top 4 Tiles are Locked" Improved performance when using the Modifier "S and Z can be used interchangeably" Improved various interactions with mirror tiles, wildcard tiles, and exclamation tiles Diamond Tiles that are locked will now retain their progression when unlocked - Sorry, this was broken!…
- Bug Fixes - 1.04 - 17 July 2025
Thanks for your bug reports! New Added labels in perk screen if you cannot choose a perk because you already have the maximum number of Modifiers / Upgrades You can now navigate to the score bar with a controller, to show how many points are needed to finish the round (previously required a mouse) (Coming soon, was broken!) Added 150 petitioned words to the dictionary Added symbol to Emerald tiles to help colourblind players differentiate from Golden tiles Fixed Changed Modifiers to not consider ! as a "letter", to avoid situations like "If First Letter is !" Changed it so typing now prioritises Special Tiles, hold shift to prioritise Standard Tiles (flipped behaviour) Fixed issue with "3 in 4 chance for the perk screen to have four perks to pick from" Modifier Fixed issue with vowel corners and Special Round "First Tile is Locked" Blocked the Special Round "Word Must Include Highlighte…
- Bug Fixes - 1.03 - 16 July 2025
Thanks for all the bug reports. I'm continuing to fix and improve the game - with a focus on show-stopping problems. Here's what I fixed in 1.03. New Added option on Steam Deck to show Mouse Cursor, if you prefer to play with a virtual mouse rather than touch (please use the system settings to change the joystick or trackpad to mouse emulation). Keyboard shortcuts only appear when you start using the keyboard. They won't show if you're a mouse only player Fixed Fixed issue with resuming a save with "This Modifier shows the next four tiles to come out of the Letter Bag" Fixed extremely rare crash related to giving random Upgrades Fixed issue with resuming a save game and Modifiers/Special Rounds that highlight which tiles are vowels Improved clarity on rules for Special Round "Can Submit Up to 4 Tiles" Fixed issue with Modifier "+2 Bonus Points if the word is the same length as the previ…
- Bug Fixes - 1.02 - 15 July 2025
Thanks for playing Word Play, and thanks for your bug reports on Discord. This patch is focused on fixing some of the more critical errors, including a few game breaking bugs. - Fixed "Fill all the additional tile slots on the board, for the first word of each round" not working when resuming save game - Fixed "Fill any unused Upgrade slots with random Common Upgrades" not working when resuming save game - Fixed problems with "S and Z can be used interchangeably" - Fixed problems with "Any word can start with RE" - Fixed problems with + tiles and wildcards in the same word - Fixed controller issue: you can now quickly drag a tile onto an upgrade card by pressing right trigger - Fixed issue with "Swap a tile with a Vowel from the Letter Bag" and "Y is always considered a Vowel" - Fixed issue with "If the word has at least three different Vowels, multiply the Final Score by 2" and "Y is a…
- Hotfix: Locked Tiles Bug - 15 July 2025
Hi there! Thanks so much for playing Word Play. The launch has been amazing! I am currently working through your bug reports and feature requests. I hope to have a proper patch available soon but wanted to put out a quick hot fix to solve a problem where... If you have the Modifier "All tiles are automatically Refreshed at the start of each round" and then enter the Special Round "The Top 4 Tiles Are Locked for 4 Submissions", it would create a very strange bug. This was quite a common occurrence and caused a big issue, but was thankfully fixed by changing a single line of code! Thanks again - I'll get to work on the other issues! Mark
- Word Play is Out Now! - 14 July 2025
Hey there! This is a quick message to let you know that Word Play is out now! There's a 10% discount for the first seven days so snatch it up early if you want a discount. Word Play is a strategic spelling game where you'll need to make words to score points - so you can unlock powerful perks that let you score even higher. The game has over 150 perks (from rule-bending modifiers to crazy special tiles), special rounds, different difficulty modes, accessibility settings, and even a casual quick play mode. I plan to add even more modes, features, and perks down the line. If you have any issues with the game, please check my support page here. The soundtrack for the game will be released shortly after the game - so check it out here. Thanks for checking it out - hope you enjoy! Mark
- How to play Word Play in another language - 14 July 2025
Word Play is designed and developed to be played in English. Not only is all the text in English, and the dictionary only has English words, but much of the game is specifically and carefully balanced around the unique properties of English words, spelling, letter use, and so on. However - the game does have a secret way to play with other languages. This is an advanced, experimental, and largely unsupported way to play the game. Please do not attempt this if you're not familiar with modding games! Also, please note that this does not work with the pre-release demo version of the game. With all those caveats out of the way, here's how to play with non-English words. Finding Your Save Location First, you'll need to find the folder with your save game in it. Here's where to get it: Mac Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Support/com.GMTK.WordPlay PC YourUserName/AppData/LocalLow/Game M…
- Accessibility in Word Play - 17 June 2025
Hey! With Word Play less than one month away, I wanted to check in and talk about an important part of the game: accessibility. Accessibility refers to options, features, and design decisions that open a game up to people who have specific needs or requirements. And I've tried to pack the game with this stuff so that as many people as possible can enjoy the game. Let's look at some of the main ones... Visual Accessibility The options menu features a bunch of ways to make the tiles more readable. That includes... Lowercase Letters High Contrast Colours Multiple Dyslexia-friendly fonts Colourful tags on vowels Mix and match them to find a set-up that works for you. There's also a feature to turn off the spotty animated backgrounds if those prove too distracting. Motor Accessibility Word Play should be effortless to interact with. So with that in mind, I've tried to make the game work acro…
- What's in the full version? - 6 June 2025
Hey! Thanks so much for checking out the Word Play demo. As you can imagine, the demo only gives you a small sample of what the full game will contain. So here's a rundown of what to expect in the full release when it launches next month. More Special Tiles You've gotten to play with Golden Tiles in the demo, but the full game features a bunch of other upgraded tiles too. Like Dot Tiles, which double the word's score if used as the final tile. And Diamond Tiles, which power up every time you don't use them. There are others to discover! More Perks The demo features just 27 perks (that means the modifiers, upgrades, and gifts you can grab when finishing a round). But the full game has over 100 of them! Want to hold on to some tiles when refreshing? That's a perk. Want a tile that can mirror the letter to its left? That's a perk. Want to permanently destroy tiles? That's a perk! These per…
- Patch Notes - Demo 1.04 - 5 June 2025
Hello! I've just applied the final patch for the demo, ahead of Next Fest on Monday. So here's what is new and fixed. New You can now open the letter bag and peek at the game board while the shop is open, using two new buttons. Options menu lets you change volume settings from the title screen Fixed You can now input "ing" tiles with the keyboard, by using the I key. Volume and music sliders now save properly Various other fixes That's the final update to the demo, outside of perhaps a few invisible bug fixes if anything major gets dredged up during Next Fest. Otherwise... I better finish up the actual game! As always, if you'd like to report a bug or suggest a feature, please visit the GMTK Discord where we have a few forum rooms for Word Play. Mark
- Patch Notes - Demo 1.03 - 2 June 2025
Hello! I've just applied a quick patch to the demo, mostly with bug fixes. So here's what's what: New You can now revert a glass tile after making one. Drag and drop the glass tile back onto the upgrade card to smash it and start again Fixed Holding the shuffle button to sort the tiles alphabetically now works on controllers and keyboards, too Various other fixes Also - because this update made some under the hood changes to the codebase, save games from previous builds won't work and so they have been ruthlessly and carelessly deleted. Sorry! If you'd like to report a bug or suggest a feature, please visit the GMTK Discord where we have a few forum rooms for Word Play. Thanks so much for word playing! Mark
- Patch Notes - Demo 1.02 - 30 May 2025
Patch Notes - Demo 1.02 Hey! I've just applied a patch to the demo, ahead of Next Fest in a couple weeks. Here's what's new and fixed: New If you spell a word that's not in the Word Play dictionary, you can petition for its future inclusion from the options menu You can now spell words longer than 10 tiles. Just keep adding tiles to reveal a secret second set of submission slots! Added volume sliders for music and sound effects The title screen now shares some helpful tips for advanced options You can now click and hold the shuffle button to sort the letters alphabetically "+4 Refresh" gift now shows you how many refreshes you currently have "Covert All Tiles to Golden Tiles" gift now shows you how many tiles you have with that letter Fixed The "Preview upcoming letters" modifier now shows the "Ing" tile correctly Fixed an issue with glass tiles and the Midas Touch modifier Using a cont…
- 20,000 Demo Downloads! Thanks for Trying Word Play! - 27 May 2025
Hey, Mark here. I just wanted to give a huge thank you to everyone who has tried the Word Play demo, and wishlisted the game on Steam. The demo has been downloaded more than 20,000 times and the game has almost 20,000 wishlists which means it's in a great position for launch. Speaking of which... I'm planning to launch the game in June, shortly after Steam Next Fest ends. So that means I've got a few more weeks to make the rest of the game! Gulp! What's in the rest of the game? Well... the demo has just one difficulty mode and about 25 perks (i.e the modifiers, upgrades, and gifts). The final game has more rounds, over 100 perks, more special rounds, more music, more skins, more everything! I hope you're excited to check it out. I've seen all your feedback on Discord, Bluesky, YouTube, my email inbox, and the Steam forum, and I'm working hard to implement it. Going forward it would be a…
