By Jessie Contour and Kelcey Gray (University of Texas at Austin)
Illuminated manuscripts are celebrations of letterforms. So, too, is Dropcaps, a strategic word game with a medieval spirit. The name itself draws from the decorated capitals of manuscripts and hints at the core game mechanic: falling letters and spelling words.
Gamers are no strangers to spelling. “Currently, about 23% of mobile gamers play word games, making it the 5th most popular game genre.” [1] That’s likely thanks to the success of games like Words with Friends and Wordle. As of 2023, the latter was played by a staggering one in three people in the U.S. daily. [2] To appeal to this mass audience of word smithers, mobile word games either use generic designs that lack personality or identity, or they rely on familiar skeuomorphic visuals akin to Bookworm.
Dropcaps combines elements of familiar grid-based game mechanics—spelling words á la Scrabble and falling tiles like those in Tetris—with unique gameplay derived from the architecture of the medieval page. Large decorative drop caps push down from the top of the board. Players must maneuver and position the small sans-serif letter tiles around the drop caps to spell words. Successfully spelled words must relate to the theme of each level, adding a layer of intellectual difficulty to the game. Dropcaps encourages a monastic kind of focus—the board remains still until the player moves, rewarding patience and strategy. Players who spell ten words are rewarded with medieval quippery in the form of fun facts from medievalist Dr. Maureen Quigley.
Left to right: fun fact screen and victory screen
The game’s visuals are loaded with references to the manuscript. Rather than leaning into skeuomorphic visuals like parchment and ink, which would neither be necessary to communicate gameplay nor tone, the game harnesses pixel art and a restrained palette, including an approachable pseudo-textura font [3], vibrant hits of red nodding to rubrication, and manicules as calls to action. The visual direction for Dropcaps also includes curated imagery and custom sprites that capture the irreverence and humor oft found on the medieval page. Within the game’s win screens, players can encounter illuminated bonnacons, “arcane animatronics,” and a pixelated pile of poo. Of special note is the use of two cloaked figures from the Psalter and Office of the Dead [4] throughout the game’s tutorial—the archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary serving as dead-ringers for the developers Contour and Gray (see Fig. 3).
Right: A well-worn tome serves as the game’s level select screen
Dropcaps’ technical development centers on two key components: the systematic curation of thematic word banks and the design of an intelligent letter-delivery algorithm. The word banks prioritize common first letters (Barn, Bark, Bat, Bear, Ball) while avoiding words that are long or have uncommon single-use letters (Qs, Xs, etc.). The word banks were born out of requests to ChatGPT for “words related to Animals that start with A”, and expanded by way of Natural Language Processing with Python’s NLTK Package [5], cross-referenced with a Scrabble Dictionary tool. The letter algorithm evolved over time from a random letter generator into a complex system of grouping and sorting based on shared letters and character frequency to increase playable options with fewer tiles. The ultimate goal of which is for players to spell desirable words efficiently while also feeling smart.
Perhaps most significantly, Dropcaps was created by professors Kelcey Gray and Jessie Contour as a pedagogical case study for their first-of-its-kind course offered at the University of Texas School of Design and Creative Technologies: Typography in Games.
Dropcaps is available on the Google Play Store (developer mode) and will soon be released on the App Store later this year.
Ludography
Words with Friends, Zynga, 2009
Wordle, Josh Wardle, 2021
Bookworm, Popcap Games, 2003
Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov, 1984
Scrabble, Hasbro/Mattel, 1948
Bibliography
[1] For detailed information: https://wordgames.medium.com/crunching-the-numbers-the-stats-behind-popular-word-games-d0827a3af601#:~:text=Currently%2C%20about%2023%25%20of%20mobile,5th%20most%20popular%20game%20genre
[2] For detailed information: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattgardner1/2023/05/27/american-wordle-fans-spend-3-days-a-year-playing/
[3] https://floodfonts.com/ferryman/
[4] For detailed information and more images of the manuscript: Psalter and Office of the Dead, Annunciation, Walters Manuscript W.117, fol. 158v, ca. 1265-80
[5] https://realpython.com/nltk-nlp-python/
Images
[Fig. 1] Dropcaps fall down the board, player spells M-E-O-W
[Fig. 2] A sampling of Dropcaps visual language in-game. Left to right: fun fact screen and victory screen
[Fig. 3] Left: Developer Doppelgangers at the start of the tutorial. Right: A well-worn tome serves as the game’s level select screen
Thanks both, this looks really cool and will be breaking up my commute next semester! Is there any scope to tie the game more closely into the medieval? Do later levels maybe link to ‘farming’ or ‘monastery’ words? And would a Latin version be viable (or is that too much conjugation/declension)?
Thanks for your comment! We hope you enjoy playing Dropcaps.
After we decided on the medieval theme, Jessie and I knew we wanted to offer medieval facts as a reward to the player. We wanted these facts to relate to the theme of each level, so we tried to think of large-scale themes that both afforded word variety and some cross-relevance to the modern and the medieval. Later levels include themes like “Garden” and “Kitchen,” which we hope will resonate with the history buffs and the average gamers. Not that those groups are mutually exclusive, as we well know!
You’ll see this at launch, but our tutorial level only uses 4 ‘monastery’—or perhaps more accurately ‘printers’ —words that all start B: BOOK, BIND, BOLD, and BLEED.
As for Latin, we would need to hire a consultant for that! I wonder, though, if Latin would offer an easier word algorithm. Perhaps language support should be one of our long-term goals.
I think it’s super cool that you decided to design this as a mobile game.
It’s a super popular platform, arguably more so than consoles or desktops, but doesn’t get nearly as much attention from scholars.
Congratulations!
Thanks for your comment, Vinicius. We hope you download Dropcaps once it launches!
Fascinating point about mobile games lacking attention from scholars. I have some hunches, but I am curious to hear from you: why do you think that is the reality?
Thanks again!
I think that a lot of researchers (in history and archaeology, at least; it might not be the case in other fields) come from a very specific niche that plays very specific (mainstream) games, and tend to overgeneralize based on their experience. In other words, we have an unexamined positionality as fans that makes us prioritize a certain kind of game in our analyses.
Unfortunately, these games very often tend to be hegemonic, blockbuster titles. And they also tend to shape how we define and categorize games, creating a vicious circle. I.e. if we think Assassins’ Creed or Crusader Kings is the “ideal type” of what a game is, we’ll struggle to adapt our conceptual apparatus to experiences like Roblox, walking simulators, word games, kinetic novels, etc.
Felipe Pepe recently argued there is a geographic and class bias in it as well: a lot of people who write about games come from the Global North and reasonably affluent backgrounds, and tend to assume everyone shares their tastes and purchase power. https://felipepepe.medium.com/the-gentrification-of-video-game-history-dfe11f1e08ae
I’m sure there might be other reasons, but these are my hunches!
Bit late to the party, but just wanted to say congrats, the game looks super cool, especially for mobile! I’m really excited to try it when it’s out. I love how Dropcaps brings in that medieval manuscript vibe (the Walters Psalter reference was such a great touch) and turns it into something fresh and playful. It’s a great blend of old and new!
Hi Ricardo, thank you so much for your comment! I am working hard to finish up a few final development details and publish on Google Play and App Store before IMC!