Vocabula

A hand-drawn word game. Letters arrive scrambled on a dial; put them back in order, learn what the word means, keep a streak going.

Built with SvelteKit, Tailwind, and PaperCSS.

Zero runtime cost

There is no backend, no API key, and no LLM call anywhere in the shipped game. Words, definitions, and hints all live in src/lib/data/ and are bundled into the static site. The whole thing plays offline.

The one optional network path is the free-text Topic filter, which asks Datamuse for related words and dictionaryapi.dev for their definitions. Both are free and keyless, both are time-boxed to three seconds, and either failing just falls back to the local pack. See src/lib/net/topics.ts.

Modes

Route	What it is
/	Free play. Choose length, rarity, topic, and how many words.
/daily	Five words, identical for every player on a given date. One attempt.
/lexicon	Every word you've solved, with its definition and when you learned it.

The daily puzzle is derived from the date alone through a seeded PRNG (src/lib/game/rng.ts → src/lib/game/daily.ts), so two people on opposite sides of the world get the same five words with nothing coordinating them.

Scoring

100 base, +20 per letter beyond three, +50 for using no hints, +50 for a clean solve, and up to +100 for speed against a par of six seconds per letter. Consecutive solves multiply the lot by ×1.2, ×1.5, then ×2. Hints cost points but never break a combo — only a reset does that. All of it is in src/lib/game/scoring.ts.

Controls

Tap or drag across the dial, or use the keyboard:

Key	Action
A–Z	Place that letter
Backspace	Take the last one back
Space	Reshuffle the dial
Esc	Clear the row
Enter	Next word

Tapping a letter in the answer row also sends it back to the dial.

Development

npm install
npm run dev       # dev server
npm test          # vitest, covers the pure logic in src/lib
npm run check     # svelte-check
npm run build     # static site into build/
npm run preview   # serve the built site

npm run build emits a fully prerendered site via @sveltejs/adapter-static — drop build/ on GitHub Pages, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, or anything else that serves files.

Growing the word pack

The pack ships hand-authored and needs no tooling. To add more:

GEMINI_API_KEY=... npm run expand-pack -- --tier=uncommon --count=40

scripts/expand-pack.ts appends validated entries to the tier's data file. It runs on your machine only — never at build time, never in the browser — and every candidate is checked for length, duplicates, and hints that leak the answer. Review the diff before committing; nothing it writes is proofread.

Project layout

src/lib/data/     the word pack and its query helpers
src/lib/game/     rng, scoring, daily seeding, session state, journal, share, sfx
src/lib/net/      the optional keyless topic lookup
src/components/   LetterDial, AnswerRow, HintBar, ScoreBar, FinishScreen, …
src/routes/       /, /daily, /lexicon

Sound effects are synthesised with WebAudio at runtime, so the repo carries no audio assets. They default to off.