Games as a Family

For a long time, playing games as a family has been something that many people have enjoyed. It might be something simple like a game of Monopoly as a family at Christmas or some Saturday night card games but either way, getting together a group of loved ones and playing a game is something that has been enjoyed for many years. The introduction of the internet and the possibility of playing these games online did switch things up a bit, but people still often opted to enjoy the more social aspect of gaming and get everyone together in a room to enjoy them together.

Even when things did progress to online gaming, these games often took their inspiration from the modern traditional games that many of us were used to enjoying. Most popular word games online are based on board games, which is similar to how slot sites offer games based on land-based slot machines – because gaming developers know that these games are already popular, so taking inspiration from them can really help.

Modern Day Games

There is no end to modern games that can be played, all with their own levels of complicatedness and challenges to complete. Of course, there are games like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty which are full-on computer games, and then there are more simple things, like online word games and puzzles to complete.

Over the last 2 years, one sector within online gaming that has really increased in popularity is online casinos. As people were forced to spend more time at home, they opted to seek out online entertainment and things that they could do online to be entertained. Throughout these years, many brands within the online casino industry saw record numbers when looking at how much revenue they had received and the money they had made. The popularity of this isn’t something that is likely to massively drop off any time soon, but there is another competitor in the mix.

Although different from online casinos in that you usually don’t have to part with money in order to enjoy them, online daily word and puzzle games have been proving popular in 2022. Wordle was the first word game of its type to go viral, but as you can imagine, this led to a heap of Wordle alternatives being released – not just word games but games where you had to guess music or film in a similar way too!

Why Are Games Like Wordle Proving So Popular?

There are several theories as to why Wordle has taken off in such a way, but many people put it down to the simple gameplay. Most people that play online games are used to the need to download apps and go through a sign-up process in order to be able to enjoy them, but Wordle is browser-based, and you don’t need to enter any details to play. This makes it instantly accessible across a whole range of devices, which means that no one that wants to play needs to feel left out! Although high-tech games are very much flavour of the month when it comes to online gaming, it is thought that the chance to step away from that and enjoy something in a much more simple way has helped the game increase in popularity so quickly.

Of course, it isn’t just accessing the game that is simple – the actual gameplay itself is far from complex. You have six tries to guess a five-letter word, and it tells you whether any letters in your guess are correct – this makes it a game that so many people are able to play without a set of complicated rules to remember. Many of the games that have followed suit use the same simple premise to play – Heardle gives you six chances to guess a song. All without an app and a sign-up process in a similar way to Wordle.

Word games have been popular for a number of years, so it is no surprise that one of the first online ones to go viral was Wordle. Although there are no points per letter for words, it does have a hint of being inspired by the letter tiles we’re all used to seeing in Scrabble, and that familiarity could well have contributed to its success too.

On top of that, the fact that the game is a solo game and easily shared on social media helped make it sociable and competitive! The share button on the game allows people to easily share their attempts with others without revealing any hints as to what the word is – and of course, people soon got on board with sharing their winning streaks too! This all created a sense of community where people wanted to cheer on those who had done well and wanted to smash their own scores too!

The fact that Wordle is only available to play once a day has definitely contributed to what makes it successful. People are keen to wait for their next try rather than binge playing it for a day and quickly get bored of the game's repetitive nature. Instead, people waited until midnight to be able to attempt the next game & beat their friends to guessing the next work.

Games progressing from physical board games to online versions are nothing new – we have seen plenty of board game-inspired games online at places like online casinos. Players generally like the familiarity that these games have, so it makes sense that game developers latch onto this and use it to develop online games in the hope that they’ll be as popular as Wordle has been so far in 2022.