Someone tried to ruin Wordle
Plus the 35th anniversary of Adventure of Link, the Risk of old board games, and taking console games mobile.
Hello, and welcome to the second edition of Press Any Button. Both Tim and I really hope you’re enjoying this new newsletter for gaming news and discussion relevant to every kind of player.
This week we talk about the bot that wanted to spoil Wordle, the positives and negatives of playing console games on your smartphone, why revisiting boardgames from childhood is a risk, and the 35th anniversary of an under appreciated Zelda game.
(Not so) local man(?) (temporarily) ruins everything
By Alice
Wordle has been taking over group chats and social media feeds with its tiny black, white and green boxes (or other colour of box, if you are using light mode). For the somehow initiated, it’s a browser-based game where you have six attempts to guess a 5-letter word, with letters in the correct spots turning green, and letters that exist in the word but a different place turning yellow.
It’s a simple pleasure that took off when the share feature was added in mid-December. The beauty of the share feature is that it doesn’t spoil the word for anyone else, and you can all compare how you did.
Not content to just enjoy the words as they came, Robert Reichel looked at the Wordle source code to see how it worked for his own amusement, and then shared his findings a couple of days ago. As you can imagine, that left the door open for a bunch of cheating, but that doesn’t really matter in a game with no leader board, where you’re only competing against yourself and your friends.
However, not everyone is happy about Wordle’s success or people sharing their scores, so on Monday someone launched a Twitter bot designed to automatically reply to people posting their Wordle scores with a spoiler for the next day’s word. The best word to describe the maker of this bot harkens back to the Wordle from the 21st of January: Prick.
Why someone would be so sad as to try and spoil the harmless fun of others requires an investigation at some point – it’s not like this is a Farmville request situation, just people having fun and participating in a shared event.
If you want to remain unspoiled and continue enjoying the simple pleasure of Wordle, unburdened by visions of the future, you should block @Wordlinator on Twitter.
What to play
If you enjoy Stardew Valley, or other soothing games of its ilk, I highly recommend Sneaky Sasquatch on Apple Arcade. There aren’t any ads or in-app purchases, just a Sasquatch who wants to help save his national park from a developer, and also play golf, have a pet, drive a race car, get a job as a forklift driver (as all children should), go skiing, and generally have fun.
While you’re on Apple Arcade, Tiny Wings+ is the perfect skills-based mini game to play in front of trashy TV this summer. You play as a flightless bird using the smooth sides of hills to get momentum to fly, and your challenge is to go as fast as you can through the course. It’s mini, it’s silly and it’s a nice extra distraction from, you know, everything.
Tell Me Why is one of those games that I haven’t stopped thinking about since it was released in 2020. It’s still on Xbox Game Pass and it’s well worth investing the couple of hours to solve the mystery of Tyler Ronan and Alyson Ronan’s childhood, and repair the twins’ relationship. Developer Dontnod are experts at narrative games, and while the gameplay is hardly thrilling, the innovative story makes up for it.
It’s the end of the annual quiet period, which is a good time to pick up games that are getting sequels in the coming 12 months, either to refamiliarise yourself or work out where your priorities are for new games. I've been working my way through Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice and God of War 2018 in anticipation of their sequels, but you could also look at Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn, Oxenfree or Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle.
Those subscribing to the $60-per-year Switch Online Expansion Pack will now find Banjo Kazooie in their Nintendo 64 app, and it’s just as funny, colourful and challenging as ever. This was Rare’s answer to Mario 64, an evolution of their Donkey Kong Country games into three dimensions, rife with secrets and collectibles and wise-talking animals. Well worth playing even after 24 years.
Let’s take this outside
By Tim
The Nintendo Switch was a bit of a revolution in 2017, and remains a massively popular console, largely because it lets you play full-fat console games with decent controls away from the TV. But did you know you can create a similar experience using your Xbox, PlayStation or PC by streaming the output to your phone? It might sound complicated, but it’s relatively simple and you can get great results with just a regular internet router. I use it all the time to play games in bed.
The most important thing is that your gaming machine has a strong and reliable network connection. It doesn’t necessarily need to be fast, and your internet speed doesn’t matter at all, but for best results I’d make sure your machine is plugged into your router with an Ethernet cable. If Wi-Fi’s all you can get, make sure your router and gaming machine are in nice open spaces.
The official apps you want are Xbox, PS Remote Play or Steam Link, which will walk you through how to pair with your gaming machine. Your console or PC will run the game of your choice, but will send the audio and video through the network to your phone, where you play using virtual on-screen buttons.
Of course for the best Switch-like experience you’ll want an actual controller. On Xbox and Steam you can use anything (I recommend the Razer Kishi, but a lot of iPhone users swear by the Backbone), or get a cheap mount and use whatever Bluetooth controller you have. PlayStation makes you use a DualShock, but a non-official app called PSPlay is just as good and opens up compatibility with any pad. Just play for a bit to make sure the network performance is smooth before you invest in a nice controller.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
There is a certain magic in going back to games from one’s youth. After writing last week about the somewhat traumatising experience of playing Risk with my dad as a child, I started to reminisce more about the helpful lessons I learned while playing. Granted, “you can never trust anyone in war, not even family” and “alliances aren’t worth the paper they’re written on” were perhaps a little cutthroat when playing with a 5-year-old. But knowing how to place your resources, not spread yourself too thinly, and build up defences at your major borders have some real-world applications if you squint and tilt your head.
So, over the weekend I picked up a brand-new copy of Risk to teach my wife to play, and was surprised by just how many different versions there are, yet none so nice as the copy from the 80s my dad had. The cardboard boxes of flimsy, easily tangled, plastic soldiers were nowhere near the quality of the nice clear boxes and well-moulded figures I remember.
While there have been some changes to the rules and board, the game largely remains the same (depending on the version you buy – there are a lot to choose from and they’re surprisingly expensive). Kamchatka is still the seat of power and essential to victory, Australia remains the easiest continent to take and defend, and it still has the potential to be a very slow game where success is as much based on chance as it is strategy. When we played, games took about half an hour, unlike the 6-day epics of my youth.
Unfortunately, after two games, my wife declared she never wanted to play a two-player game of Risk again because I “roll too well”.
Unlike videogames, which usually get better as they’re re-released, some boardgames are best left as memories.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
This month marks the 35th anniversary of Adventure of Link, potentially the least visible and least appreciated Nintendo-made entry in the entire Legend of Zelda series. Originally released on floppy for the Japanese Famicom Disk System, this sequel to the original Zelda plays entirely differently, moving combat and dungeons to a side-scrolling perspective and borrowing aspects from contemporaneous games — such as lives and experience points — which the series dropped thereafter and never picked up again. But then it also introduces magic spells, towns with non-player characters to talk to, and a dramatic battle with Dark Link, which all went on to return later.
It’s a beautiful and really worthwhile game, with interesting combat and a lot of space to explore, though a poor English translation and dated trial-and-error design means you’ll almost certainly want a walkthrough or strategy guide. After decades of Zelda it’s tempting to just run into a dungeon and try your luck, but that will end poorly; like an RPG, Adventure of Link requires you to kill a lot of enemies to raise your experience and stat levels.
You can get the game on practically every Nintendo device, but most recently I’ve been playing it on the new Zelda Game & Watch; an adorably tiny portable system which includes the original Zelda, Adventure of Link and Game Boy’s Link’s Awakening, plus a cute interactive clock for displaying on your shelf. I like that it holds your progress in all three games even as you jump between them, and I’m really enjoying the first two games on a dedicated device I can get into and out of instantly. I’ve even printed out big maps to attempt to play through sans guide, like a real ‘80s nerd. The Game & Watch is $80, from pretty much any retailer.