Welcome to the devlog! A running journal for sharing progress and behind-the-scenes updates.

2025-12-17

  • Continued improving accessibility for colorblind users. While High Contrast Mode helps, relying solely on color is insufficient, especially for ones who cannot perceive any colors.
    • Pattern Mode: Introduced a mode where tile states are distinguished by patterns, not just color.
      • Vertical stripes for letters that are present (yellow/red)
      • A thick “X” mark for letters that are absent (gray)
      • No pattern for letters that are correct (green/blue)
    • Letter Outlines: Added a separate “Letter Outlines” mode that adds a high-contrast outline to text on colored tiles. This ensures legibility regardless of the background pattern or color, helps correct and present letters pop-out, further aiding with readability.

2025-12-16

  • Following up on the pain points reported online for Wordle
    • People with colorblindness have difficulty distinguishing between the colors used in the game. Thought about various ways and the simplest first was to add a high contrast mode. Tested it out and it should work for most cases, however, it is a good practice to not just rely on color to convey information as I found here. Will do a fast-follow on this.
    • Furthermore, I just simulated how the game would look like to people with colorblindness. This isn’t as good as someone with actual colorblindness would experience it, so I will try and get some feedback by posting it in relevant communities.

2025-12-14

  • These two were the pain points among the several that people reported online for Wordle
    • Difficulty in reading the letters because of lack of contrast between the white foreground and the colored background. Improved color contrast as per the WCAG guidelines. The game is now more accessible to users with visual impairments.
    • Difficulty in distinguishing between letters that occurred more than once. Letters that occur more than once will now appear underlined. This enables users to identify multiple occurrences of a letter.
  • Added Physics and Chemsitry topics.

2025-12-06

  • Discovered that the meta tags for the root index.html were bad. Intially I had intended for them to point to the christmas topic since this website was launched at the time of Christmas. Things have evolved quite a lot since then.
  • Made sharing button pop by changing CSS styles and experimenting with different copies.
  • Realized that sharing has a lot of friction. First people choose the format and then they’re led to the sharing buttons. Reduce friction by removing the intermeidate choice of format selection. Add option to share on LinkedIn and Bluesky as well.

2025-12-05

  • When watching Wired’s video with the Stranger Things cast answering most frequently Googled questions, I realized that I could find those questions and put them in a blog post to attract potential players. Created a Vecna FAQ blog post.

2025-12-01

  • I was submitting indexing requests for topic pages on Google Search Console, page by page. It was both inefficient and restrictive. There is a limit on the number of URLs you can submit to Google Search Console. I did some digging and found that I could submit a sitemap to Google Search Console. Generated a sitemap using and submitted it to Google Search Console.
  • After submission, I got an error for the topic pages. The error was “Page is not indexed: Redirect error”. I found out that the issue was that my sitemap was listing URLs without trailing slashes, but my server was serving URLs with trailing slashes. I updated the sitemap to include trailing slashes for all topic URLs.

2025-12-30

  • Problem: I went to Google Search Console and when I checked the screenshot section for topic pages, I saw they were blank. The reason for that was all content was rendered client-side by JS, so when Google captures screenshots of the initial HTML, nothing is visible.
    • Solution: Static site generation using react-snap to fix blank screenshots in Google Search Console. Topic pages now contain pre-rendered HTML with full content visible before JavaScript loads.
  • Discovered on the Google Search Console that the topic pages are not indexed. The error shown was “Page is not indexed: Redirect error”.
    • Solution: Single the game was originally a single page web app, all requests were redirected to the home page /index.html. Now, that redirect has been restricted to only the /play/* route.

2025-11-29

  • Separate page for each topic.
    • Motivation: I performed a Google search for “Harry Potter Wordle” and expected to find topamine on the first 10 results page. Of course, it didn’t work.
    • Then, I tried “Harry Potter Wordle Topamine” and it listed Topamine, however, when I clicked on the link, it directed me to a random topic (as programmed). It is so annoying for a user to be directed to a random topic page when they explicity asked for a specific one!
    • It is then I realized that I need to create a separate page for each topic for
      1. Google to know about the topic
      2. to provide a better user experience.

2025-11-23

  • Made devlog public
  • Requested indexing for blog and devlog pages on Google Search Console

2025-11-22

  • Blog post for Stranger Things Season 2 Recap

2025-11-21

  • Start a blog to get traffic to the game
  • Blog post for Stranger Things Season 1 Recap
  • Stranger Things topic - play Stranger Things wordle

2025-01-02

  • Disney and Friends topics

2024-12-31

  • My Hero Academia and Code Geass

2024-12-30

  • Hunter x Hunter

2024-12-24

  • South Park
  • Display rules when someone logs in for the first time. Since the game mechanics are slightly different from original Wordle (unlimited play and variable length words), I want to make sure that are aware of this when the play for the first time.

2024-12-23

  • Introduced cursor. Enable players to skip letters. I got early feedback that people found it annoying to have to need to write letters in order to make their next guess. The interface didn’t allow players to skip letters. If they could fill in various boxes with letters they have already guessed, visualization and planning becomes much easier. Not just that, it also makes it easier to try different letters at various places and see what works.
  • Rick and Morty topic

2024-12-21

  • Christmas carols topic

2024-12-14

  • Add a navigation bar to organize various modals and links.