Interview: Noah Rosenfield (Addagrams) and Peter Barnett (Qwert) on reinventing word games in 2023

Earlier this year, two word games were released close to one another - Qwert and Addagrams. Both are looking to bring something new to the tried and tested genre, which isn't easy considering the thousands of options already available. Discovery is tricky, especially when you're an indie developer. I've played a bit of both and think they're great fun, so do check them out if you haven't already. 

We recently chatted with Noah Rosenfield and Peter Barnet, who worked on Addagrams and Qwert, respectively, about all things word gaming. Together, we discussed the challenges involved with making their games, what the future holds and where they drew influences from, among other things.

Can you please introduce yourself and your role in your game to our readers?

Noah: I'm Noah Rosenfield, founder and lead at 1TON Games and the sole creator, designer, and developer of Addagrams. If there was a hat to be worn, I'm wearing it.

Peter: I'm Peter Barnett, game designer and founder of Karate Possum Games. I created the concept for Qwert and did all the design and production work. The only thing I didn't do was the coding—for that I hired a much more capable developer!

What is the appeal of word games for you personally?

Noah: For me personally, I think the inherent playfulness of language is fascinating and I view word games as a way to explore that. Language is this tool developed to help us express and communicate the entire human experience. And so, just like life itself, language is filled with joy, surprise, contradiction, and – perhaps most importantly – choice. You have so many words and ways to communicate an idea. Language is like a combinatorial puzzle, even before you start to apply game mechanics. And written language adds a whole other layer to that, creating even more opportunities for emergent play. It's truly amazing.

Peter: One thing I really like about word games is their simplicity. I think it’s pretty amazing when you can take something we use every day, like language and create a novel and interesting experience. As a consumer of word games, I feel rewarded every time I’m able to recall words I forgot I even knew or when I learn new ones—it’s empowering! Word games can even inspire creativity by getting you to approach problems with divergent thinking, which is something I really tried to achieve with Qwert.

For those unfamiliar, could you give a summary of your word game and how you think it stands out from the rest of the genre?

Noah: Addagrams is a word puzzle that celebrates player choice, diverse thought, and playing with your words. Players are given a set of letters which they use to make two different words. So, the letters "eoontw" could become "one two". Or "won toe". Or "too new". There is always more than one possibility. The answer I see may not be what you see. But both are equally correct and that's what Addagrams is built on.

Addagrams is fundamentally different from every other word puzzle out there because it’s about your journey, not just the destination. Usually, a word puzzle has a single solution. Whether it's Wordle, or a crossword, or a word search, there's only one right answer and it's the same for everyone. Addagrams is the only word puzzle where you can blaze your own trail. You are free to put your own personality into the puzzle, constructing your unique path from start to finish using the words you want.

Peter: Qwert is a multiplayer word game where players must type responses to simple, open-ended prompts like “Starts with A” or “Contains B”. Depending on the game mode, players must come up with words as quickly or as thoughtfully as they can. In Time Attack, players play 5 90-second rounds typing in as many words as they can based on a new prompt each round—the player with the highest total score at the end of 5 rounds wins the match. In Wordplay, players submit only one word per round, and the first player to win 3 rounds wins the match. There’s also a survival mini-game called Splat, where players form words out of a pesky swarm of flying letters.

I think what makes Qwert stand out the most is its open-ended concept. By stripping down the rules and replacing letter tiles with a keyboard, the game becomes a blank canvas that encourages creativity. Players can use almost any word in their lexicon at any given time, as long it satisfies a basic prompt like “Ends with G”. The visual style of the game is also pretty unique—kind of a Victorian-era vintage look which my wife coined as the “Vaudevillian aesthetic”.

Were there any other games that particularly inspired you? Whether that's a word game or something else entirely.

Noah: My goal was to make a game around the joys of anagramming without too much constraint. I was reverse-inspired by many existing anagram games including Text Twist, Spelling Bee, and Wordscapes. By reverse-inspired, I mean I wanted to actively avoid what they were doing, which is to give the player a handful of letters and ask them to make every word possible. They have other things going on, but the winning strategy is always "make every possible word". It's an exhausted mechanic that's exhausting for players.

In terms of influence, there's a game called Ghost we used to play as kids. It's a spoken word game where players take turns spelling a word letter by letter but have to avoid actually completing a word. It's full of these "gotcha" moments where you suddenly realize there's a smaller word inside of the word you were thinking of. Or you think you've set a good trap, but it totally backfires. It definitely illustrates some of the emergent language properties I was hoping to explore.

Peter: I couldn’t have created anything worthwhile without leaning on all the amazing products, games and applications people have created that I’ve interacted with over the years—and I could easily fill up pages—but for the sake of brevity, here’s a short list of my more immediate influences:

Hanging out as a bored teenager in my parent’s basement playing Ghost (an oral word game where you take turns adding letters on the end of a growing word, trying not to be the one to complete it); my affinity for Bossa Nova; the After Dark flying toasters screensaver from the ’90s which has been burned into my subconscious; weird Victorian illustrations; my middle school keyboarding class with Ms. McIntosh where we learned to type by playing Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing on old Apple IIe computers; a snow-covered cabin in Big Bear where my wife and I invented games to pass the time; and my beautiful, encouraging mother who passed away last summer—the game is dedicated to her.

Were there any challenges you faced when developing a word game in 2023?

Noah: The "developing" part is actually easier than ever before. Tools are higher quality and more accessible. Documentation, tutorials, and community resources are abundant.

Playtesting was difficult as a number of the in-person opportunities disappeared entirely or haven't yet recovered in the wake of the pandemic. But I think the biggest challenge in 2023 – and forever more – is discovery. The amount of digital content available is just staggering. Between social platforms, streaming video, and 1000 new apps published daily, competing for eyeballs feels like the most difficult piece of the process.

Peter: It’s not glamorous, but marketing has probably been the biggest challenge so far. Getting noticed in a crowded market isn’t easy, especially for small developers. App stores offer a great opportunity for getting content out into the world but don’t necessarily guarantee high visibility. Apple offers some features that help bridge the gap, but it would be awesome to see even more support for indie developers to get their work noticed.

When looking at the word game landscape before starting development on your game, what stood out to you as something that needed to be reinvented?

Noah: I mentioned wanting to switch up the default anagram goal of "make all words" and I was also interested in the word play element of word games. When I looked at other games they often had additional mechanics that worked in direct opposition to the freedom and enjoyment of simply playing with words. I love Scrabble, but my plays are dictated as much by the board squares and point values as by what I could or want to make.

With Addagrams, I hoped to create something that encouraged playing with your words for fun as much as it did playing them for points.

Peter: I wanted to see more multiplayer word games, especially ones with real-time multiplayer. Words with Friends is a great product, but unless your opponent is sitting next to you on the couch, there can be a lot of downtime. Long intervals of waiting aren’t inherently a bad thing with word games, but I wanted to see something a little more frenetic. This is probably pretty niche, but another feature I wanted to see was the ability to keep track of your words with definitions. Word games are pretty effective tools for learning new words, so adding the dictionary feature to Qwert was a no-brainer.

What can we expect from your game in the future?

Noah: We've got two areas we're focussing on. First up is increasing the social elements. In our next two updates, we're adding friend functionality to our leaderboards and enhanced sharing capabilities. We want players to be able to see how their choices stack up against those of their friends and the rest of the community.

The second thing we're looking at is increasing the variety of play. We've started exploring options for both cooperative and competitive games as well as an entirely new game mode that explores some of the same, emergent language properties but in a more accessible and bite-sized way.

Peter: I’m always working on updates and refinements, and I try to be really good about responding to users’ feedback and suggestions. I even added a word to the dictionary for one user without them asking! But in terms of future plans, my main priority is to keep the game fresh and interesting, so you can expect some updates in regards to that.

Have you played one another's games? And if so, what do you think?

Noah: Prior to the interview, I hadn’t heard of Qwert (there’s that discovery problem again, ha), so I just snagged it to give it a go. It’s a great little game that’s easy to get into. Anybody can pick it up and play. I can definitely see myself popping in for a quick game now and again and I challenge you to beat my “starts with V, ends with E” answer of “verisimilitude”.

Peter: I’ve played a few rounds of Addagrams, and I’m really enjoying it so far! It’s devilishly challenging. And I don’t think I've ever used the word “devilish” in a sentence, so that’s really saying something. I love the idea of progressively adding new letters and word lengths into the mix as well as the multitiered dimension—deceptively simple concepts that take anagramming to the next level. "Not your grandma’s anagram” if I were doing the creative. Feel free to use that, Noah!