Plans in Designing an Educational Rogue Lexicon

I have not touched Rogue Lexicon for a long time. I had recently missed a 4-month long jam deadline due to overscoping so I'm a little bummed out. Though I plan to continue the project since it's looking promising, that leaves me available to allocate my free time to Rogue Lexicon.

While I started Rogue Lexicon as just a 'simple jam game', I had since reevaluated it's potential. It wasn't until finishing the project that I realize how it's different from most casual word games commonly found in mobile and browser. For now, I'll be keeping track of the following challenges for the development Rogue Lexicon.

Challenge # 1: Putting the Rogue in Rogue Lexicon

Unlike most word games, Rogue Lexicon does not rely on pregenerated puzzles as most word games. Instead, it uses an algorithm to generate tiles independent of the game's board state. Since the game deletes replaces that the player uses, it is technically possible to run out of possible words to find (though unlikely due to algorithms in place). If the players manage to decipher that algorithm, it is also possible for skilled players to manipulate tiles not dissimilar to card counting. There is skill-expression involved.

In the future, I plan on creating a roguelike mode where not only can the players have access to useable abilities to special tiles to manipulate the board space, I also plan on adding 'prefix' and 'suffix' tiles consisting of multiple letters that they can add to their tile pool during a roguelike mode allowing the player to create more complex, and longer words.

Challenge # 2: Creating a Tagalog mode of the Game

This had always been at the back of my mind during its development. Creating a word game in my mother tongue would not only be cool, but also good. However as a game jam entry, there were just not enough time to implement it. The biggest hurdle here would be in finding a large enough open-source dictionary to use here. Though I've found a 42k entry Tagalog Dictionary, it pales in comparison to the 296k words found in the dictionary I used for the English mode of the game. Finding the right ratio of tiles would also need to be adjusted for this mode. But it shouldn't be too hard.