Wordle goes old school, now available on Game Boy

Playing Wordle on a smartphone too mainstream? A third-party port brings the popular word game to the Nintendo Game Boy. — Stacksmashing/Twitter

Need more old school charm when playing hit word puzzle game Wordle? There’s now a version for the Nintendo Game Boy.

Kotaku reported that an IT security researcher with the twitter handle Stacksmashing designed the port after being bored and stuck indoors over the weekend due to bad weather.

He said the whole project took about three hours of tinkering.

WORDLE is now running on the Game Boy! pic.twitter.com/Zk8aDr7MST — stacksmashing (@ghidraninja) February 6, 2022

He explained that due to the limitation of the 30-year-old handheld console’s hardware, he had to limit the size of the game – instead of having access to most English words, users now had about 8,000 of the most common ones.

Still enough words for 21 years of daily gaming though.

Wordle challenges players to guess the five-letter word of the day in six tries or less. After each attempt, the web-based game highlights the correct letters in green if they are in the right position or in yellow if they are not.

For those that don’t have the console, it can also be played on Game Boy emulators.

Having a free version of the game might also be assuring for fans worried that its acquisition by The New York Times may lead to the game being put behind a paywall.

The game’s creator, engineer Josh Wardle, sold it to the publishing house for an “undisclosed price in the low seven figures”.

He had initially decided not to monetise the game with advertising or a subscription, before selling it off. The newspaper also said that the game would continue to be free.