Community Embraces New Word Game at Mid-Year Play Day This past Sunday, families at Takoma Park’s Seventh Annual Mid-Year Play Day had the opportunity to experience OtherWordly for the first time. Our educational language game drew curious children and parents to our table throughout the afternoon. Words in Space Several children gathered around our iPads […]
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We create word games that explore meaning, not spelling. Our studio pioneered idea-linking games—where players navigate semantic networks to discover how language connects.
In Other Words
Available now on iOS
The first daily word game with a million ways to win. Players connect two seemingly unrelated words through chains of meaning—from “soldier” to “gentle” through uniform → blouse → delicate. Each puzzle offers over 100,000 valid solutions across 400+ million possible paths.
Built on our Linguabase of 100 million word relationships, the game doubles as a visual thesaurus when you’re not playing. Every player charts their own course through clouds of 17 related words that shift with each choice.
Learn more about: In Other Words
OtherWordly
Coming soon to iOS/iPadOS
A galactic word quest combining physics-based gameplay with semantic puzzles. Players fling solar words through space to match orbiting targets with missing letters—when “ice cream” meets “v_nil_a,” your brain fills in “vanilla” while you dodge cosmic debris.
The game adapts seamlessly across 15 difficulty levels, serving English learners to vocabulary experts. Features include Kid Mode with teacher-crafted content, extensive accessibility options, and an original 1.5-hour soundtrack streaming on Spotify and Apple Music.
Recognition
Our debut title OtherWordly earned 14 major recognitions before launch:
- 4 Wins: Most Innovative Game (IndiePrize 2019), Games for Good (Serious Play 2021), Best Educational Game (CODiE 2021), Arts & Humanities (Reimagine Education 2021)
- 10 Finalist positions: Including Best Casual Game (TIGA 2021), People’s Choice (MEGAMIGS 2021), and repeated selections at MAGFest and AwesomeCon
- NSF Grant #2304423: AI-based content generation for semantic games
Our Approach
Traditional word games test spelling or vocabulary recall. We reveal the living network that connects every word through meaning. This creates gameplay that mirrors how humans actually think about language—through associations, not letters.
We discovered that 76% of random English word pairs connect within seven steps. This “small world” property enables intuitive navigation from “Batman” to “inspect” through vigilante → watchful → circumspect. We transform these natural pathways into playable experiences.
Technology
Both games run on the Linguabase—our semantic network of 1.5 million words and 100 million weighted relationships. Built over a decade using novel AI approaches and Library of Congress data, it represents the most comprehensive mapping of English semantic connections ever created.
This infrastructure enables real-time content moderation, adaptive difficulty, and the generation of puzzles that feel both surprising and sensible. Learn more about our technology.
Team
IDEA Games operates as the game development arm of IDEA, a nonprofit advancing literacy through technology since 1999. Our core team includes Michael Douma (Creative Director), Greg Ligierko (Technical Director), Li Mei (Lead Developer), and Orin Hargraves (Lexicographer), supported by collaborators from University of Victoria and Northeastern University.