Tutorial: How to create a Wordsearch – Easypromos - Online Helpdesk

Do you want to give your audience the opportunity of a moment of fun and entertainment? We present to you the Wordsearch game, that will allow you to challenge your users to find the words in a given time. Users will earn points for each word they find, and will also get additional points based on the time remaining. In this way, the participants will compete with each other to obtain the highest score in the Ranking and as administrator you will be able to reward the best classified.

These are the contents of the tutorial:

1. General description

Games have always captured the attention of users, who enjoy solving challenges such as word searches, word games, puzzles and memory games.

In particular, in this tutorial we explain all the steps to create a Wordsearch game. You will be able to indicate which words the users should look for and the system will automatically create the word search for the users to complete the challenge.

The Worsearch game has the following features:

You can decide which words users should look for in the board game (a maximum of 15) and the system will automatically create the word search.
You can choose between three levels of difficulty: easy (the words will be placed in the box horizontally or vertically), medium (the words will also be placed diagonally) or difficult (the words can have any orientation and also from right to left) .
You will be able to limit the seconds that the player has to complete the wordsearch (from 30 to 300 seconds). To increase the difficulty, you can also limit the maximum number of moves.
Apart from the Latin alphabet, you can also use Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic and Hebrew characters. In addition, you can use emojis, hieroglyphs and create a personalized alphabet showing only the characters that you prefer.
Multiple options to reward participants: You can assign the prize/s to the participants with the highest score, run a random draw among the participants with the highest score, draw a prize among all the participants, etc.

2. How is the user participation flow

What will the user experience be like? The promotion is made up of different pages that the user will find when interacting with the promotion to participate, such as: the initial welcome page, the registration page, where the user will register with their data, the page that presents the game, etc. As a whole, the different pages will make up the structure of the promotion and the flow of participation that the user will follow to complete the promotional mechanics of the promotion.

In addition, as an administrator you can select which participation flow you want users to follow. Specifically, there are three different participation flows: Identified Mode, where the user must identify and register before being able to play; Visitor Mode, where the user first plays and then identifies and registers in order to claim their prize; and Anonymous Mode, where the user participates without identifying himself or registering. The choice of one modality or another will determine how the user's participation and experience in the promotion will be.

Learn in this article how each participation flow works, as well as the different pages that make up a promotion.

3. Create the promotion

How to start creating the Wordsearch? The following tutorial presents the first steps to create your promotion so that you don't miss any important point. You will learn all the general management options that you have available as an administrator in your dashboard to manage and edit the promotion.

Discover the first steps to create my first promotion.

4. Set up the Wordsearch

Here are all the steps to create the Wordsearch game. To do this, go to Editor > Pages > Participation, and click on edit to start setting up the game. You can now begin customizing the game from the "Wordsearch" tab, where you'll find the following customization options.

Step 1. Configure the gameplay settings

In the "Gameplay settings" tab, you'll find all the options to customize and configure the game. Specifically, you can personalize the following aspects:

A. Basic Gameplay Options

Level. Choose the difficulty level of the game: easy, medium or hard.
Show words to find. You can check this option to show the words to find to give the participants hints on what to search for.
Time limit. You can establish a maximum time that you want to give the users to finish the Wordsearch (30 to 300 seconds).
Limit moves. You can establish a maximum amount of moves that the user gets to solve the game (between 10 and 50).
Disable sounds: Allows you to turn off the default sounds enabled in the game
Background music: Allows you to upload an audio file in .MP3 format (maximum size of 2MB) that will loop as background music during the game.

B. Game options

Words to search: Here you can see the sample words that the wordsearch includes by default. In order to add the words, first remove the words that come by default with the sample. You can add up to 15 words, and they should have a minimum of 2 characters.
Minimum number of columns that the game board will have (minimum 12, maximum 20).
Alphabet: Next, select the alphabet you want to use for the words in the word search. The system provides the following predefined alphabets although it accepts any desired UNICODE character:
- Latin.
- Arabic.
- Cyrillic.
- Hebrew.
- Greek.
- Emoji (includes the 30 most used emojis).
- Hieroglyphic.
- Custom alphabet.

Note: With the option "Add characters to the alphabet", you can add characters that are not included by default, for example:

The "Latin" alphabet does not include, by default, some special characters, numbers or special signs. You can add them in this field to use them in the word Search. In this way, you will be able to challenge your audience with a 'mathematical operations' word search 😀

Click on the option "View characters included in the game" to check the characters that are included by default in the different predefined alphabets. If you, for example, choose to create a Word Search game with the "Emoji" alphabet, you can check which emojis are included by default, to know which additional emojis you'd like to add according to the theme of your Word Search:

The "Custom alphabet" option allows you to add your own characters to create your own alphabet. You can add the desired characters from the "Add characters to the alphabet" option. In the screenshot below, only fruit and food emojis have been added in this field, in order to propose an only food word search to challenge users to find the proposed food combinations:

Step 2. Customize the game design

In the "Design" tab, you will find all the options that allow you to customize the game board design. Specifically, you will find the following options:

A. Main colors of the board

In this first section, we find the options that allow us to customize the general design of the board, based on the following options:

Font color.
Selection color.
Background color.
Display outer border.

B. Colors of found words

In this second section, we find the options that allow us to customize the design of the words the user finds while playing, based on the following options:

Font color.
Background color.
Stroke width.
Border color.

Step 3. Instructions Screen

In the "Instructions" tab, you can customize the screen that will appear before starting to play. This screen can be customized with the following elements:

Image: This image will serve as the header image.
Description: This field can be used to provide instructions for participating in the game.
"Start" Button: You can customize the text on the button.

Additionally, you can disable the Instructions screen.

Step 4. Score screen

In the "Score Screen" section, you can customize the colors and texts that will be displayed on the screen the user will access after completing the game, which provides a summary of their performance along with their score. This screen is divided into:

Game OK: This is the screen that the user will access if they complete the game within the set time.
Game KO: Out of Time: This screen is shown when the user runs out of time and cannot complete the game.
Game KO: Out of Moves: This screen is shown when the user runs out of moves and cannot complete the game.

For each of these screens, you can customize the following elements:

Header image.
Message: Text displayed at the top of the screen, which by default says "Good job!" for the "OK Screen" and "Time's up!" for the "KO by Time Screen."
Background color: The administrator can configure the background color of this screen to match the brand's corporate colors.

Additionally, you can configure the following options:

Hide score: Allows you to hide the summary of the score achieved by the user after playing.
Apply promotion's general colors: This option allows you to apply the same colors from the promotion to the game's score screen.

5. Customize the design and finish the settings

Once you have configured the Wordsearch, the next step is to finish the configuration of the other options of the promotion, such as customizing the design template with your own colors and texts, introducing the legal bases, the viral content settings, etc. Check the tutorial to finish the configuration and customization of your promotion.

6. Manage scores and publication of winners

By default, the system will assign a score of 100 points to each correct move, considering each word found to be a correct move.

Additionally, points will be assigned based on the participant's remaining time. In particular, 10 points will be assigned for each remaining second.

How to publish the winners

Easypromos provides a complete Prize and Winners Management system that will allow you to create the prize or prizes that you want to give to the users who participate in the game, as well as configure how you want to assign the prizes and select the winners.

Specifically, you have three ways to assign the prize to the winners, depending on your preference:

1. Assign the award to the player in the first position of the Ranking. In this case, follow the steps of this tutorial that explains how you can assign the prize to the fastest player.

2. Carry out a giveaway among the users who have obtained a higher score. Follow the steps of this tutorial that explains how you can create the prize to be raffled among the players with the highest score, for example, the 5 players with the most points.

3. Carry out a draw among all the users who have participated in the game. Follow the steps of this tutorial to create the prize and raffle it among all the participants.

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