While developing my other Alexa skill, Good Vibe, it got me thinking how a classical word game that we have played in our childhood can fit nicely with Alexa’s VUI. This is how the idea of Word Chain was born.

Word Chain is a game where players take turns in coming up with words, from a specific category, that begin with the letter that the previous word ended. It’s a fun way to build up and refresh your vocabulary.

Alexa can be a referee, validating the words are correct and not used, and it can be a fully qualified player that can play with us to build the longest word chain, or competing with us, depending on the mode.

The whole skill was really fun to implement. The stuff are typical programming 101 and string manipulation algorithms. Most effort I have spent on making the word selection picking more smart, meaning that Alexa will try to select such words so that the next player is left with enough choices that can continue the game in a direction that will last longer and build a longer word chain. So I think this is where the game shines.

In case you want to try it out, here are links to it:

https://www.amazon.com/tgeorgiev-Word-Chain/dp/B071RT4ZCZ (for the US store)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/tgeorgiev-Word-Chain/dp/B071RT4ZCZ (for the UK store)