I built a vocabulary battle game for English learners — and my crowdfunding is still at zero backers
Hi DEV! I'm Hatsuki (Hakki), an English tutor and Japanese–English translator based in Tokyo, and a solo developer.
I built WordForge, a free browser game where you battle by making English words from letter tiles. My students kept forgetting vocabulary between lessons, so I wanted something competitive enough that they would want to review words.
What it does:
- Tile-based word battles: longer and rarer words score more, with 6 rarity tiers (N to LG, up to 8x points)
- 25,000-word dictionary, with CEFR levels on 5,273+ words
- AI opponents at 5 difficulty levels, plus an adventure mode with 45 stages
- Online room battles for 2–4 players using a room code
- A study mode aligned with Japan's EIKEN exams (Grade 5 to Grade 1), with quizzes, a word book and a dictionary
- No signup, no in-game purchases — it runs entirely in the browser
Play it here: https://word-forge.replit.app/
The honest part: I'm running a crowdfunding campaign on CAMPFIRE (Japan's Kickstarter-like platform) to build a classroom version for schools and English classrooms — teacher dashboards, no ads for classroom use, that kind of thing. The campaign has been live for over a week and is still at zero backers and ¥0. It's an "All-in" campaign, so whatever is raised goes into the project even if we don't reach the ¥5,000,000 goal, and support starts at ¥1,000.
We're also running a free weekly online tournament, the #WordForgeCup, starting December 5 — screenshot-based entries, anyone can join.
If you have a moment:
- Please try the game and tell me what breaks, what's confusing, and what's fun
- If you like it, a share or a ¥1,000 back on CAMPFIRE would genuinely help: https://camp-fire.jp/projects/993639/view
Feedback from other developers and educators is what I need most right now. Thank you for reading!
— Hakki