Draft:Wurdian

Wurdian is a online game that offers a different take on Scrabble and is playable on iOS and Android devices. The app has been developed by Ronald van den Berg (Dutchman), and the name Wurdian comes from the Frisian 'Wurd' which means word. The game was released in 2021.

Gameplay
Wurdian's rules are similar to the ones in Scrabble and Wordfeud, in the sense that players play on a 15×15 board and that the regular board contains bonus tiles which double or triples the letter or word value. For a bingo 45 points are rewarded.

However, Wurdian has some differences compared to Scrabble. Namely, every player receives one blank tile and there is a fixed bonus of 25 points for the first one that clears their rack (no points are added for remaining letters on the opponent's rack). The game has a 'final round' in which players have one more turn after the first person clearing the rack. If they manage to finish with an empty rack as well, they will receive 10 bonus points. The game can also be played with a bonus for long words which rewards players for playing longer words.

The colours of the board and the bonus tiles can be customised and definitions of words can be looked up by using a check button. With that button words can also be submitted to be added to the database.

Lastly, there are is a game mode with daily challenges in which players need to find either 3 bingos or a 15-letter word.

The game can be played with 2-4 people at once and with different turn durations: from 90 seconds to 72 hours per turn.

Tournaments
Additionally, there is a tournament mode in which each participant plays a game against every other player and a ranking is maintained based on the game results. A player creating a tournament acts as the host of the tournament. The host has several setting options:

- The tournament can contain between 2 and 20 players. - The time between turns can be set to 12, 24, 48, or 72 hours per turn. - The host can decide on what type of board is played and if the long word bonus is applied - Tournaments can be set as public or private and can be limited to players with a specific skill score.

Languages
Wurdian offers several languages to play: Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, English, French, Frisian, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Portuguese and Swedish and in December there is a Top 2000 'language' version. This is an occasion for players to place (part of) songs on the board that are in the Dutch Top 2000.

Reception
In June 2024 Wurdian had around 112,000 registered players and roughly 4.1 million games had been played. Wurdian was reviewed by the Dutch computer magazine PC-Active and was rated with 4.5/5 stars.

Media
The Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (AD) highly recommended Wurdian, praising its variety of options and customisable boards. Moreover, Wurdian received media attention from the Frisian broadcaster Omrop Fryslân thanks to its availability in the Frisian language, which had not been seen before in this type of word game. The developer worked closely with the Frisian education committee Afûk to make a Frisian interface for the game, which also highlighted this collaboration on its website.