I made my first game in React: a little puzzle game called Blockle

Introducing Blockle: A Unique Puzzle Experience Built with React

I’m excited to share my first venture into game development—a creatively crafted puzzle game named Blockle. You can explore it live here: https://blockle.au.

About Blockle

Blockle is an innovative puzzle game that marries the mechanics of Wordle and Tetris, presenting players with a fresh challenge every day. The core gameplay involves fitting a series of Tetris pieces into a central grid to form words horizontally. Each day introduces a new puzzle to keep players engaged and challenged, with grid sizes varying from 5×5 to 7×7.

Typical gameplay sessions last between 5 to 10 minutes, making it an ideal quick brain teaser for daily entertainment. Whether you’re solving the puzzle or just exploring the mechanics, I hope you find it both fun and stimulating.

My Journey into Game Development with React

As a developer with five years of experience in React, I decided to channel my skills into creating a game—an area I’d been curious about exploring. This project has been a rewarding learning experience, spanning approximately one month from conception to deployment.

What I particularly enjoyed about this project was how straightforward it was to host and iterate on the game. I could deploy updates rapidly, gather user feedback, and implement improvements efficiently—a process that kept the development engaging and iterative.

Technical Stack

The development of Blockle leveraged a modern and efficient tech stack:

React: The foundation for building interactive UI components
TypeScript: Ensuring type safety and maintainability
TailwindCSS: Streamlining styling with utility-first CSS
Vite: Enhancing development speed with fast bundling
Cloudflare Pages: Serving the static build with excellent global CDN support

(Confession: I always find myself debating the order in which to list these technologies!)

Open Source and Collaboration

Interested in the technical details? The complete source code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/ollierwoodman/wordgridtetris/. I welcome any feedback, suggestions, or insights—whether regarding the codebase or the game itself. Your input helps me learn and improve with each iteration.

Final Thoughts

Embarking on this project has deepened my appreciation for game development, and I’m eager