The design of Beş Harfli Kelime Oyunu started when I discovered the high entertainment potential that games in the Word Puzzle category have and found no mobile implementation of decent quality. The initial idea was to keep the mobile game as simple and minimalist as possible and host most of the user experience on a single screen. The concept was to be so simple that the mobile title would not only be limited to a single language, but also to a subset of that language and only cover five-letter words.

I chose the Godot Engine as the main tool for developing the title due to its open source nature, large community, comprehensive documentation, and strong support for both mobile platforms. Did it have everything that I needed? No. However, this limitation was not a show-stopper, but an opportunity to give back to the Godot community and fill the gap by developing several publicly-available Godot plugins that provided the missing platform-specific features that my design needed.

After spending months in development and QA phases, Beş Harfli Kelime Oyunu was unleashed on the Android platform, taking its users on a joyful ride through the realm of five-letter Turkish word puzzles.

Not long after the release of Beş Harfli Kelime Oyunu, came plans to create additional games that support Turkish words with six, and later, four letters, giving birth to Altı Harfli Kelime Oyunu and Dört Harfli Kelime Oyunu.

Realizing that three-letter words were too easy and seven-letters too difficult, it seemed that the puzzle adventure in Turkish was complete; at least for this specific type of puzzle. Now, it was time to embark on an adventure in another language. What better language than my wife's native language of Kyrgyz, for which almost no mobile puzzle games existed! After struggling for a while to create its dictionary, Беш Тамгалуу Сөз Оюну was released, followed closely by Алты Тамгалуу Сөз Оюну and Төрт Тамгалуу Сөз Оюну.

Were we done? Were the six mobile games released on the Android platform enough? Would we not support the one language that everybody either already speaks or wants to learn? No, English couldn't be neglected and Five-Letter Word Puzzle was born with siblings Six-Letter Word Puzzle and Four-Letter Word Puzzle following soon afterwards.

All nine games were ready and we were excited to have all our friends and family with an Android device try our games! Initial responses were positive, but many reported struggling to complete the puzzles. We did take a note of this feedback, but thought we were ready to make our games available on Apple devices as well.

First step was the iOS version of Beş Harfli Kelime Oyunu and everything went as planned 👍👍. The second in line was Altı Harfli Kelime Oyunu and we experienced a massive shock 😨! We had run into an App Store review guideline named Design Spam, which we were not previously aware of. This made the initial plan of providing multiple lean games with minimalist interfaces impossible, at least on the iOS platform 🙁.

Were we to abandon our plans for the iOS platform or merge all nine titles into one for gamers with iPhones? The answer was to merge all nine titles into one, of course! It was the dawn of the new and enlarged Beş Harfli Kelime Oyunu! Yes, we kept the name. Although looking and behaving like Frankenstein at first, the new Beş Harfli Kelime Oyunu eventually evolved into a superstar, working like a charm in all nine of its modes.

Were we done? No! We needed to give the new Beş Harfli Kelime Oyunu something that would set it apart from the other games and heeding the feedback of friends and family was the best way to do it! Yes, we added an 'Easy' difficulty level for all those who were struggling with the previous default level, which was renamed 'Hard'. But we didn't stop there; we added a difficulty level even easier than 'Easy' and called it 'Lingo', named after the popular TV show broadcast on TRT. At 'Lingo' difficulty, the first letter is made available at the start of the puzzle, bringing a successful puzzle completion even closer to our player base.

-Cengiz
[Designer & Developer]