[GAME] Unolingo - The Next Great Puzzle

[Jerry Brady]

This month, my first independent Android application was completed, it's for everyone that enjoys, crosswords, Sudoku, Words with Friends, 7 Little Words and other word games.

Every Unolingo is a 10 x 10 crossword puzzle without clues and 26 empty squares that require the precise placement of each letter in the alphabet. Depending on the level of difficulty, from one star (easiest) to four stars (most difficult), a Unolingo puzzle can be completed in 5-15 minutes and calls for a mix of word knowledge, logic and deductive reasoning.

Unolingo is available via Andorid Market, Amazon App Store and the NOOK store - making it available on just about every Android device under the sun.

Android Market; Unolingo

Amazon Appstore for Android: Unolingo

QR Code

Small screenshots:

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The challenge: Complete a 10x10 crossword puzzle without any clues except for the letters given in the puzzle. The catch is you must place each letter of the alphabet, using each letter only once to complete the puzzle.

Can you do it?

 

[Jerry Brady]

We will be updating this application in the market this coming week and introducing 160 more puzzles.

 

[Jerry Brady]

We are pleased to announce that Unolingo Series #2 is now available offering 160 more puzzles to try!

We're very interested in feedback from people evaluating Unolingo - so please let us know what you think.

 

[RichSz]

I've only played one easy so far but I enjoyed it. Can't really rate it properly at this point, though. So far, so good!

 

[Jerry Brady]

Thanks, Rich. And do let me know what you like/dislike about Unolingo - I'm always looking for constructive criticism and feel it can always be a better app.

 

[dnb428]

I like the concept of this game. I was always bad at the trivia aspect of crossword puzzles, and would rely on just trying to make the letters fit. This game makes you do just that. It's a fun game, and I have not experienced any problems with it thus far.

 

[RichSz]

Ok, I've been playing it off and on for the day. Overall, I really like the game! I like the interface, it's clean and easy to understand. I like the game play in that you allow players to get unstuck with sufficient penalties. So far every word has been reasonable, I've known them all and nothing was too obscure. It's an addictive game.

My issue is that there are a limited number of puzzles and more need to be purchased. I realize this is inherent to this type of game since I doubt you could auto-generate puzzles. I'm not a fan of games which you buy then have to keep on paying to play. That's my problem and not anything unethical on the part of the developer. I haven't checked to see how much a series costs but would guess $0.99. The problem with a series is if you find the harder ones too difficult, you're buying a bunch of puzzles you have little hope of finishing without tons of hints and audits.

I enjoy it and would pay to play it but think there isn't a ton of re-playability and keeping up with new puzzles could get expensive compared to similar games.

 

[Jerry Brady]

Rich,

I really appreciate your assessment of Unolingo especially because it did a wonderful job of summarizing its strengths and weaknesses.

We can't auto-generate puzzles. Setting the puzzles is a time-consuming process and we work very hard to ensure that the puzzles are high-quality and meet all of our design objectives. This makes them inherently more expensive.

One of the interesting things about our experience with Unolingo so far is that we find that users have an expectation that play should be free or close to it. Android users seem particularly even more so bend toward free play since we see about 3 times the conversion rate on iOS.

We take it as a challenge to drive the proposition of the value of our puzzles home - buying them is money well spent and a solid form of entertainment that will engage and stimulate your mind and at the same time we realize that Unolingo is not for everyone.

We are enjoying the process of learning from our mistakes and continue to strive to learn from them an continually improve our applications and our marketing of them and it's most rewarding for me when we hear constructive input such as that which you just posted.