Word Race
Gameplay
Gallery
Progression Phases
Section 1 - Ideation
Word Race started as a University project for a module titled 'Mobile Games Development'. I first iterated through several ideas, starting with a hangman-style game, all the way to an idle clicker! Eventually, I landed on bringing my favourite thing (outside of games), cars, together with my favourite genre of mobile games, word games. I pitched it to my group and received very positive feedback.
Section 2 - Planning
Planning started with research into current games that I wanted to take inspiration from, including but not limited to: Wordscapes, Wordle, and Scrabble. I eventually decided that I wanted to focus more on the car side of it, so I ended up choosing a hangman-esque guessing system that takes lives for every incorrect guess. I then began the creation of my design documentation, alongside some early UI layouts.
Section 3 - Prototyping
When I got into the engine, I started to use my plan in order to bring my idea to life. I created a basic menu navigation system as well as a system to pick random words from a data table asset. This taught me a lot about the flow of UI and the difference in the thought process that is required for Mobile games. At this point, the project was runnable exclusively through the built-in mobile emulation.
Section 4 - First Build
After approximately 4 weeks of development, I had my first build running on an old Huawei. This version of the project had a start menu and a basic gameplay loop that allowed the user to pick a word length, generate a random word from a data table, and then guess a letter. The foundations had been laid, and, from here, the pace really picked up.
Section 5 - Current State
As it stands, the game itself is in an early alpha build. I used this version of the game as my final submission during week 9 of development, then roughly 1 month after that for GradEx 2025, held at the University of Staffordshire. During GradEx, Word Race was shortlisted as Top 5 in the Games Design & Development category! This game me the motivation to continue working on this post-graduation. To this day, Word Race has taken a back seat to some other exciting projects with both Software Academy, and my own studio UnderWaterGames. The most recent developments are with the new backend that I am rebuilding in C++. Word Race was 99% blueprint at its inception, so with some time on my hands, I managed to recreate (and improve) most of my original systems, which is where the game sits today!
Section 6 - More Development?
As mentioned, Word Race is currently undergoing a complete back-end overhaul into C++. It has been some time since this started, and a lot of that original motivation has vanished. I still intend for this to be my first publicly released game, and if the stars align, before the end of the year (2026). My main goal is to implement peer-to-peer multiplayer to offset any server costs, but still make the game more favourable by including multiplayer features.
