We have a big announcement for the Smartle daily word puzzle! A lot of players play Smartle regularly, often every day - because it is a daily word puzzle. And we really love seeing this. So we started thinking: how can we make the game experience a little more interesting and rewarding for our most dedicated players?
And we came up with something very simple which we think will also be a lot of fun. If you have played Smartle before, you probably know that when you start playing you get a funny username and an animal avatar. You can be a Charming Jaguar, an Agile Penguin, a Happy Lizard or many other combinations.
We started thinking about these animals and had an idea. What if we put them into two big groups and let them fight against each other? When we say “fight” we don’t mean that the animals will actually fight in real time. They will simply compete on the leaderboard to see which group can get more points and win. So if in one group some players are very good at solving Smartle word puzzles, their group is likely to win over the other group.
Daybreak vs Nightfall
We liked this idea, so we decided to try it and the easiest way to divide all the animals was to think about when they are active. Some animals are mostly active during the day. Others are more active at night. Luckily, our current animal selection was already almost perfectly balanced with about half being active by day and the other half preferring the night.
So we created two clans:
☀️ Daybreak: the day animals
🌙 Nightfall: the night animals
Now every Smartle animal belongs to one of these two clans. And it will be very interesting to see which clan will be the best in solving word puzzles. Will the winner change day by day or will we have a constant leading group?
How did we do it?
The good thing is that we already had most of the systems we needed. Smartle already has a leaderboard and every player gets some score when they play anything - daily word puzzle, Sprint, or even Archive game. Your score depends on how skillfully you play the word games and how well you perform.
So, all we had to do was simply add up all these scores together for each clan. So if you are a Daybreak animal, your score helps the Daybreak clan overall score. If you are a Nightfall animal, your score helps Nightfall. This means that when you play your Smartle word puzzle, you are not only playing for yourself anymore. You are also helping your clan.
Want your clan to win? Then play more word puzzles and collect more points! We think this adds a small but fun extra reason to come back to Smartle every day. You can still enjoy the puzzle at your own pace but now there is also a little competition happening in the background.
And of course, you can always check the leaderboard and see how your clan is doing and how many points have you added to the overall success.
What is my clan?
We are rolling out this new feature gradually. This means that some players may already see their clan, while others may not have it yet. Don’t worry if you don’t see it. The feature is coming to everyone and by the end of September all Smartle players will have their clan.
So, if you have friends who are looking for free word puzzles to play online, why not invite them to join Smartle? They might even land in your clan, helping you climb the leaderboard together. Or they might not. Then I guess your only hope would be that they are not so good at word puzzles 🙂
Solve your puzzle. Get your score. Help your clan. Daybreak or Nightfall: which one will win? We will be watching the leaderboard!
And, as usually, we will be looking for your feedback and thoughts about this new feature in our Discord server. Please, let us know what you think.