If you love Wordle and Connections, Puzzmo may be your next …

If you have added puzzle games like Wordle And relationship Following your routine over the past year, you may encounter another daily obsession. Pazmo is a new platform that brings the idea of ​​a newspaper puzzle page to a responsive web page that works on all devices. Players can sign up to join the platform for free today, which also includes a $40 annual membership option that unlocks bonus features like experimental games and leaderboards.

The ambitious new project is a collaboration between Orta Theroux and Zach Gage, a game designer who has gained popularity with mobile titles over the past few years. knot word And good sudoku, Their latest project has been in the works for years, and it serves as a kind of one-stop shop for Gauge’s puzzle catalog that beats popular hubs like The New York Times at their own game.

Ahead of its soft launch today, which enables players to sign up for the waitlist, Gauge gave me a tour of the platform and explained the philosophy behind it. The idea is not just to create another web game hub in their sea, but to create a definitive home for puzzle lovers that combines the phenomenon of lightning in a bottle of games. Wordle With community features that power some of today’s most popular games. It’s a clear solution to a problem that even some of gaming’s biggest power players haven’t been able to solve yet.

Your one-stop for puzzle games

Pazmo is a free web page that scales responsively to display clearly on tablets and mobile devices, but the twist is that it’s structured more like a magazine page. When players log in, they will see a selection of puzzle widgets in the column. Clicking on one will open that day’s puzzles, and returning to the home page will display any progress made. It replicates the experience of solving the puzzle section of a newspaper and seeing the results in a memorable form in pencil. This does not include some existing games such as Gauge really bad chessBut there’s also a selection of new games, with more to be added over time.

While dreaming up how Pazmo might work, Gage was trying to solve several challenges at once. He wanted to create a platform that would make it as easy as possible to not only start playing a game, but also to dive into a completely new game. To accomplish this, they looked for a secret weapon that print media still carry on most game websites.

“I thought back and I was like, my mom doesn’t care about sports — I mean, she likes my sports, but she doesn’t care about sports,” Gage told . “But growing up, he tried new games. And where did I see that? Well, it was in the newspaper, because he played crosswords. But she didn’t just play crosswords; He played other things. I think it was because she did crosswords and then there was the rest. And after a month of being there, you get comfortable with it and think ‘Eh, I’ll give it a try!’ Even the companies which are making newspaper game pages on the internet are not taking up this aspect of the newspaper which is extremely important.

At launch, Pazmo included six games. There are three existing gauge games among them: really bad chess, type shiftAnd spelltower, The latter two word games are easy to understand that take no more than a few minutes to complete each day. Additionally, the launch version of Pazmo brings three brand new titles. flip art is a satisfying puzzle game in which players try to fit certain shapes neatly into a rectangular frame. wordbind There is an anagram game that is currently listed as an experiment for paid subscribers only.

For those familiar with Gage’s previous work, the most exciting addition is his own spin on the classic crossword puzzle. dub cross|word, the game revisits classic puzzles in some key ways. For one, the lines on the board show how many different words an answer contains, making it much easier to figure out long, tricky answers. Each clue comes with a hint that is more straightforward (when I get stuck on “Flour that is not edible?” I reveal the more straightforward hint “Dollars, Pounds, Yen, etc.”). Gage explains that the goal is not to make the puzzles easier, but to help players better understand “crossword culture” and the language of hint logic. As an added bonus, it helps level the playing field for older players who may not be up to date on some of its current pop cultural clues.

“The crosswords we run are not just good crosswords, but really modern ones that reflect how people are these days,” says Gage. “We’re trying to bring something that feels like it’s not about golf and boats and dramas. We want to be able to do something that is more rooted in contemporary culture. And this makes our hint button serve a dual purpose, because if you are new to crosswords, you can use these hints. But if you’ve been solving crosswords for a long time, we have a lot of material you may not be familiar with, so these hints are meant to help you access this new culture.

Gauge plans to bring even more games to the platform over time, including hits like knot word And Nice sudoku. Games will not rotate in and out; The selection will continue to grow over time.

a puzzle community

Culture is a key concept that comes up several times when Gage tells me about Pazmo. The team behind it didn’t want to create just a lonely experience that would keep players in the void while solving daily crosswords. Rather, Gage wanted to take some ideas from popular multiplayer games and imagine how they might work in the context of Puzzle Hub.

“If you play Call of Duty or Roblox or Minecraft, these spaces are designed as community spaces where you go and hang out with your friends,” Gage says. “And if you’re someone who plays crosswords or Wordley every day, those games have been so popular that they’ve created ad-hoc communities, but there’s not really a place for people who like those games. “So we started thinking about what that kind of place would look like.”

As a result of that thinking, Pazmo includes many features that even giants like the New York Times have not been able to understand. For example, the platform includes global leaderboards for each game. A feed in the upper-right section of the page shows different accolades from the community, such as what is the highest-scoring word the user has received spelltower Tomorrow. There is also a chat function that lets players talk to their friends while playing.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect is its multiplayer integration. Players can create groups on the platform which allows them to track their collective statistics. What’s even more impressive is that each game features instant live multiplayer. In a guided demo, Gauge started the day flip art puzzle. With the click of a button, it generated a link and sent it to me. Upon opening it, I was immediately caught in the puzzle of gauges where we could both click at the same time. This is a perfect trick for couples who want to work together on a digital crossword puzzle without fighting over the phone.

Each of these social features make Pazmo feel like a logical home for puzzle game enthusiasts WordleEye-opening success. It takes everything that makes Gauge’s bite-sized games so appealing and unites them in a simple newspaper format that’s perfectly designed to be a breakfast companion. Don’t be surprised if The New York Times copies some of its answers a few months from now.

You can sign up to join Pazmo starting today. It’s free to start playing, although players can unlock additional features with an annual subscription.