RSTLNE — Why This Exists
It started in a very ordinary way.
I was sending my Wordle status to a friend — one of my Wordle buddies — and after I hit send, I caught myself thinking, I really like this game. I’m glad I found it. That thought spiraled into word games more broadly, and eventually landed on Wheel of Fortune. Not the whole show — the final round. The timer. The anticipation. The limited letters. The moment where you either see it… or you don’t.
I started wondering what it would look like to capture that feeling in something smaller. Something quick. Something interactive. A game that carries the simplicity and shareability of Wordle, but feels different — familiar without being a clone.
I didn’t know where to begin yet. I just knew the feeling I was chasing.
I also knew what I didn’t want.
I didn’t want a game that traps you. No streak anxiety. No loyalty mechanics. No “click forty things a day or lose progress” design. I didn’t want to hold anyone hostage in the name of engagement. If you want to play, play. If you don’t, that’s fine too.
Play should be permission — not obligation.
I wanted something you could enjoy, share with a friend, put down, and come back to whenever you felt like it. Not a habit to maintain. Just a little pocket of fun, sitting there if you’re curious.
How It Took Shape
I’ll be honest — I’m the toughest critic of the game I made.
If it didn’t work for me, it didn’t work at all.
That became the filter for everything. I wasn’t building this for an abstract audience. I was building something I would actually want to play — during a commercial break, across from a partner to see who solves it faster, or just because I’ve always loved games like Hangman and word puzzles that get straight to the point.
Once it passed that test, sharing it with other humans felt natural.
With that in mind, I started talking through what would make the game feel right. What would make it fair. What would make it replayable without being exhausting. What would make it challenging without turning it into a measure of how smart you are.
That’s where the real shaping happened.
Not in code, but in judgment calls.
I cared a lot about how the game felt. Whether something was too niche. Too easy. Too obscure. Too obvious. I wanted the challenge to come from speed and pattern recognition, not from trivia depth or insider knowledge.
The goal wasn’t to impress anyone. It was to make something genuinely playable.
As the puzzles started coming together, the systems followed. Practice exists for a reason. It’s untimed. It’s forgiving. It’s a sandbox — both for players learning the mechanics and for me doing quality control. It’s where puzzles live before they’re ready. It’s where I can slow down, validate ideas, and adjust without pressure.
Practice isn’t an afterthought. It’s part of the process. It’s where the game teaches me what it needs next.
And yes, GPT was part of this — but not as the decision-maker.
It helped me think faster. It helped me test assumptions. It helped me translate ideas into something functional. But it didn’t decide what was fun. It didn’t feel repetition. It didn’t know when something crossed the line from clever into annoying.
That part was still on me.
I don’t come from a coding background. I was a MySpace kid. I knew enough to be dangerous, not enough to build a full game on my own. Somewhere along the way, I learned more about arrays and divs than I ever expected — but the real learning wasn’t technical. It was about iteration. About adjusting. About letting the system evolve instead of forcing it to be perfect on day one.
This is also how a lot of my side projects happen.
An ADHD-fueled curiosity spiral. A question turns into focus. Focus turns into learning. Learning turns into doing. And at some point, the thing gets finished — not endlessly tweaked, not abandoned halfway through.
From the first GPT prompt to this blog post took seven days.
What started as a passing thought turned into something real. Something I can maintain. Something I can grow. And that’s been quietly satisfying in a way I didn’t fully anticipate.
This isn’t a sales pitch. It’s not a tutorial. It’s just a snapshot of how something small came into existence.
If you’re curious, the game is there.
If you play it, I hope you enjoy it.
And if you don’t — that’s okay too.
This is still evolving.
And honestly, that’s the part I like most.
