Together with toymaker Hasbro, The New York Times is creating a board game version of the well-known online word game Wordle. The board game, Wordle: The Party Game, will be launched in North America in October, the media company said on Thursday. For $19.99, you may place a preorder on Hasbro Pulse, Target, and Amazon.
The offline game seeks to replicate the same experience while pushing you against other players, but the online version of Wordle is a single-player game where you have to predict a five-letter word in six tries.
“A participant chosen to serve as the Wordle Host enters a Secret Word for each round. Players receive six chances, much as in the original Wordle game, to correctly predict a five-letter word. However, in this game, gamers are up against other players, according to a news statement from NYT.
“A player scores less points the more attempts they need to make. At the conclusion of the game, the player with the fewest points wins. The board game has a particular benefit for people who have always desired more Wordle than you may receive in the online version — it’s supposed to be just one word every day — in that you can set as many Secret Words as you choose.
Days before the NYT revealed that users will be able to connect their Wordle online game stats to their NYT accounts, the board game announcement was made.
Josh Wardle, the founder of Wordle, sold the rights to NYT in January for an unknown sum in the “low seven figures.” Prior to the sale, Wardle said that the game had about 2 million players in an interview with TechCrunch. According to a report released by Twitter in May, the game has been discussed in 32.2 million tweets since becoming live in mid-October 2021, reaching a daily high of 500,000 tweets in December.
The game has since been moved to NYT’s own site. Since “tens of millions of people” visited the company’s website in Q1 2022, the game’s purchase has benefited the company. Wordle is still available for free, but the New York Times reported a record quarter for net subscriber acquisition for its $5 per month (or $40 annually) NYT Games programme, which offers games like The Crossword and The Spelling Bee.
Other games that were influenced by Wordle have also been impacted by its popularity. Spotify just purchased Heardle, a song-guessing game, in order to enhance music discovery.
