Category: development

Word searches are the OG word games. We all remember playing them in elementary school with vocabulary words. Once children mastered the backwards diagonals, teens moved onto crosswords, or I would like to say: Word Search 2. 

There hasn’t been a huge evolution in word search games yet. The closest we have is Word Search 2.25, Wordle. I’m going to be real, Wordle is not fun. There are no hints, words are only five letters long, and you can only play once a day. There is no soul and love in that game. On second thought, Wordle is Word Search .75. It’s honestly a step back. You might as well play the OG word search still. I still can’t believe we got sucked into that game during the pandemic.

Fear not word gamers, I have found the next step in word search games. We are now introducing a themed mode to Boxlingual. Boxlingual’s weekly themed modes combine the OG word search with cross words and classic Boxlingual. Players select a theme and have to find words related to the theme. Users can view the length of the words by checking the amount of question marks in the hint/definition section. Definitions and hints can range anywhere from classic dictionary definitions, fill in the blanks, and references to memes and pop culture.

I have released six initial themes:

I encourage users to check the themed mode and highly recommend the Pixar challenge for beginners. Each word was handpicked, boards painstakingly created, and definitions made to be fun. It seriously takes time to create each theme, so please check out Boxlingual’s new themed mode!

Here’s how I make them:

First we gotta start off with a certain theme. I pick things I am knowledgeable about. Let’s go with Pokemon for example since I already made that one. Next I pick a subcategory. I got a suggestion to do Pokemon, but to make this mode fun for everybody I had to think what aspect of Pokemon are people most familiar with. Pokemon peaked in the 90s and early 2000’s with generation one and generation two. The first generation is what people are most familiar with. 

Next I had to think of words or pokemon related to the first generation of pokemon. I also have to keep into account the length of each word. I’ll write down a bunch of words that have similar letters and put them into a list. Hint when you play the pokemon mode: I looked up a list of the original 151 pokemon for inspiration.

Now this is the hard part. I literally go into Excel and create a 6×6 grid. I start off with the longest word and add words utilizing the same letters. From my experience I’ll fit around 10 words into a 6×6 grid. I’ll then review the map and ensure all words can actually be played. Now that the hard part is over, it’s time to work on the fun part. The fun part is creating the definitions and hints for users. Since I know a ton about pokemon, I looked through my brain and referenced memes as well as the pokedex. Here’s the sad part now. I won’t ever get to play the themed maps since I know all the answers. I would love to play other people’s maps. Maybe in the future Boxlingual will be released on Steam and have its own workshop.

For now, if you have suggestions or would like to submit your own theme, please email me your map, words, and definitions to <kalinawansoftware@gmail.com>. I will review and play your map for content control, and your map may be selected for posting. Keep coming back to Boxlingual (at least every week) for a new theme. Users can always go back to our archive. Play with your friends (or alone) and see if you/y’all could find all the words!

Boggle is arguably the most fun word game out there. I fell in love with the game after playing the game at family events with my cousins, aunties, and uncles. It is now a right of passage to be accepted in my family. Every time one of the cousins brings a significant other to a family event, the significant other is “encouraged” to play Boggle with aunties and uncles to prove their intellect.

We don’t play with the standard 3+ letter word rule; we actually play with a minimum of 5 letters to keep players thinking. Another twist is we don’t use the letter “S” at the end of words for plural and present tense conjugation. It would be way too easy to double dip words and to make 4 letter words reach the 5 letter minimum.

I would always lose when playing boggle with the bright minds of my family, so I had to bend the rules a bit. They admire the use of intellectual words such as “sonar” and “lunar”, and look down on words such as “tooter.” I’d find myself using low level words to gain easy points and they would just roll their eyes. Another method I used was using slang. Words the uncs would not think of like “gucci.” Whenever a slang word was played, I would have to defend against the senate (they would almost always allow me to play these words because I was one of the weakest players).

I only won one time. I cheated. I took a picture of the boggle board, snuck out of the table because I said there were too many people, and entered the letters into a Boggle solver at a seclusive location. Quickly I jotted down words like crazy, but I also made them believable. No fancy schmancy chemical formulas and overlyscientific words that I would not know. After five minutes, I went back to the main table and showed everyone off. They were impressed. We played another round and I didn’t cheat because I felt bad. I promptly lost and everybody called my last win as a fluke. From that day I wanted to become better at the game as I only played with my family.

I don’t own Super Big Boggle so I created my own version, Boxlingual. Boxlingual is a faithful recreation of Super Big Boggle, down to the dice and letters being used. This way I could practice by myself. The scoring and ruling system had been reworked from my family’s house rules. Three letter words are now allowed for more fun, but to encourage users to think more, points are awarded at an exponential rate. I’ve seen players score 3,000+ points in some games. The rules are more relaxed as past and present tense words simply ending with an “s” are also allowed. Boxlingual is dedicated to my family of hardcore Boggle gamers. Thank you everyone for checking Boxlingual out and supporting my game!