My family like the online word game Waffle but wanted to play more than once a day. So I wrote them this version in Pico-8. Along the way I reimagined it as an 8-bit console title with sound effects, music, particles, multiple levels, ramping difficulty, and a final “boss battle” that you unlock by completing all the preceding levels.
How to Play
Scrambled words are arranged in a grid. Unscramble all the words by swapping pairs of letters. You have a limited number of swaps to complete each level. Run out of swaps and you have to try again. Complete the level with swaps left over to score points.
Can you solve all the levels with five swaps remaining to win the title of Piffle Champion?
Play level 1 for an introduction to the controls. Playing through this level unlocks the rest of the game.
When playing a level, the pause menu gives you options to restart the level or return to the level selector. If you have difficulty interpreting the tile colors, you can enable graphical indicators on the tiles by toggling the "color blind" option on the pause menu with the left and right buttons.
Note: the game uses British English spellings, not American English spellings.
Credits
The music is by J.S. Bach, converted from a free MIDI file by the Denote tool.
Versions
1.7: the in-game tutorial explains the blank spaces, now that the cursor does not skip over them
1.6: usability improvements:
- the cursor changes to show whether a tile can be swapped
- the cursor does not skip over the blank spaces, which makes navigating more predictable
- on completion of a level with maximum score, the title screen moves the cursor to the next incomplete level, not the next level, to be more convenient when you are trying to complete all levels and achieve Piffle Champion status
1.5: the game starts with the next unplayed level selected, so you can start playing with a single button
press.
1.4: usability improvements: custom pause menu items behave like the standard ones
1.3: bug fix in end of game condition (you must now complete all levels with score of 5); added a small animation on title screen when you beat a level with score of 5 to show that the cursor has been moved to the next level
1.2: particle effect on title screen when the player has unlocked the final level
1.1: small bug fixes
1.0: first release
Nice word puzzle game.
Had to fail couple times before I could grasp the rule.
Nice Waffle remake! It's too bad that Waffle added the archive right when you made this.
Yes. My timing was terrible!
But Waffle haven’t added particle effects yet, so I’m still ahead of the game there. :-)
The puzzles are all randomly generated, but I do like the way puzzle 23 turned out.
Well played!
You’re not quite complete, though. The game will award you the title of Piffle Champion when you turn all the tiles green.
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