Games

Rowndy.

Make words from the centre outwards. You can take more than one letter from a ring, but you can only step out to a letter that touches the one you’re on. The catch: every letter you pick moves the next ring out.

O: shuffles the next ring
A E I U: turn it two places
B C D…: consonants turn it one place
A–L: turn clockwise; M–Z anticlockwise

Letters score their ring (1 to 4), with 5 more for reaching the outer ring, and each round hides a bonus word worth 20 (its first and last letters are shown). Eight words a game: each time you play one, a new letter takes the centre and the rings shuffle. Undo is free, but a clear costs 5 points and a word that isn’t in the list costs what it would have scored. New to it? Try the demo.

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Word 1 of 8

Rowndy is our own game, dreamt up in the studio: a word search that fights back. Built to show what a game in plain JavaScript can do in a browser.

What it shows

Rules kept apart from the interface, so a solver can play ahead exactly as you do
Every board is planted with real words, played out under the rules, so there's always a way in
A live count of the words still within reach after each move, worked out by a solver that plays every route
A guided demo on a fixed board that coaches you through two words, tap by tap
Rings that turn and letters that shuffle with CSS transitions, no canvas or library
Sound synthesised as you play with the Web Audio API, no audio files
Tap, click or type the letters; Backspace undoes, Enter plays