Zynga WWF Daily Puzzles – Letter Lock
Business Goals: To increase move revenue and add to our suite of daily puzzle games
USP
Letter Lock was our take on a word scramble genre of word games. The challenge was to make a new type of daily puzzle game that would fit in our current lineup of daily puzzles.
The goal was to make an engaging puzzle that would keep players coming back every day.
Our exploration process had us looking into a variety of references, from online versions to puzzle books. Our initial outline had a total of 6 different puzzle ideas to present to leadership. These were then reduced to 4 ideas to move into the prototype phase. During the prototype phase, we built each idea within a week, gathered feedback, iterated, and player-tested again. With this data, we aligned on the Letter Lock design.
With the design set, our next task was to understand and create the puzzle pipeline while the game itself went into development. We had to answer the questions of what makes a fun puzzle. Our initial designs were created with pen and paper. We built tools to create our puzzles and then playtested and refined the creation process until we landed on our idea of the ideal puzzle for the player. During launch, we further refined our puzzle creation process with live data from players. Our key metrics to track for puzzle design were puzzle completion and win rate, puzzle difficulty, and coin spend.
Letter Lock walks the line between puzzle and word game, creating something challenging and exciting for the player.
Links
Video Demo
Video demonstration of Letter Lock, game mode for Words with Friends.
