My wife and I built a word game

One quiet evening in bed, I showed my wife an Instagram video of a couple playing a word game. On the count of three, they would each shout a letter then race to find a word starting and ending with those letters.

My wife sat up immediately. “I want to play this, what if we made it into an actual game?”

Whenever one of us sparks an idea and we start bouncing it back and forth, we come up with pretty cool stuff. That’s been our thing since before we even started dating¹.

Anyway, within 45 minutes, we had a concept. She suggested we make an online version too. A solo variant with different rules. The next morning we hit the dollar store for supplies: cue cards, markers, dice, and a storage pouch. A few hours after that, we had our first prototype.

We were able to see what worked and what didn’t while testing it out. My brother-in-law helped us test with three players, and provided unbiased feedback that helped us refine the scoring and confirm the core concept was genuinely fun.

Then I got started on the online version. I’m not a game developer, I only learned to code during the pandemic for an art related project². But with Cursor and Claude, I dove in. Using Next.js, React and TypeScript, AI helped bridge the gap between my ideas and technical implementation.

The biggest challenge with using AI was navigating a codebase I hadn’t fully written myself when making UI changes or fixing bugs. But understanding what was being built and reviewing the generated code helped immensely.

It took about two weeks from start to launch for the online game. Most of that time went into fine-tuning details few would notice. We also kept on play testing the physical game with friends and family, which was great for receiving feedback.

What makes this special is how it changed how we think about language. My wife and I are constantly noting the first and last letters of words we encounter. Reading became a treasure hunt. Conversations pause when we hear particularly good words. We realized we’d built something beyond entertainment, for us, at least, it naturally encourages learning and linguistic awareness.

Looking back, it’s wild how a random Instagram video led here. Creation doesn’t always require months of preparation or advanced technology³. We made our prototype with dollar store supplies. Sometimes you just need a moment of inspiration and the willingness to act immediately.

Even when you’re just two people in bed with no game development experience.

The game is called Letter Deposit and is live now. Check it out and let me know what you think.