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

2. How is the user participation flow

3. Create the promotion

4. Set up the Wordsearch game

5. Customize the score screen

6. Customize the design and finish the settings

7. Manage score and publication of winners

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 

As a first step, go to the Editor > Pages > Participation > Word Search. You will see that a word Search game is set up as a sample so you can see how to configure it and thus be inspired to design your own game. You can use the "Test the game" tab to test the user experience when playing:

Next, go to the "General" tab where you can first customize the following layout options where the game will be presented:

1. Introduction message: This is the message that will be shown above the game board. You can use this text to give the users instructions if necessary.

2. 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.

When you’ve added the words, you will find the following configuration options:

1. Minimum number of columns that the game board will have (minimum 12, maximum 20).

2. Theme: can be light (by default) or dark.

3. 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.

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 "Emoji" alphabet includes the 30 most used emojis, which are:

This way, if you want to add more emojis, apart from the 30 predefined ones that we provide, you can add them in the text field:

4. Custom alphabet: This 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:

5. Selection color: By default, the color of the word selection is green but the administrator can change the color as they wish to adapt it to, for example, the corporative colors of the company or brand:

 Next, click on the "Gameplay settings" tab, where you will find the following 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).
• Option "Don't allow users to register until they complete the game": It allows to disable the promotion registration form in case the participant does not complete the game. Note: This option is only available in case of not enabling the Login system to participate.

In the "Instructions" tab you can upload an image to explain to users the steps they must follow to play.

Finally, in the "Test the game" tab, you can test the Word Search game before publishing, and make changes if necessary.

5. Customize the score screen

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

1. OK screen: It is the screen that is displayed when the user finishes the game in the established time.
2. KO screen by time: It is the screen that appears when the user has run out of time and has not been able to complete the game.

In this way, for each of these screens you can customize the following elements:

• "Feedback message text": Message displayed at the top of the screen, which by default comes with the text "Good job!" in the case of "OK screen" and "Time's up!" on the "KO screen by time".
• Background Color: The administrator can set up the background color of both screens to adapt it to the corporate colors of the brand.

6. 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.

7. 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.