Hey everyone! After seeing that some people were making their own puzzles, we realized we could quickly add some basic functionality to the game so that you can make your own puzzles and play them in Sidewords.
We didn't have time to add a nice new UI for all this, so it's a bit of an undocumented/unsupported feature. But if you grab the latest build on itch.io, you can give it a go. There's a text file with instructions where the EXE installs. But I'm also posting the instructions here below, for reference.
We'd love to for you to share any good puzzle pack files you create! :)
Owen
Sidewords Custom Puzzle Instructions
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Limitations:
You can have 6 puzzle packs with 6 custom puzzles each, for a total of 36 puzzles loaded into the game at one time.
Instructions:
- Update to the latest version of the game on itch.io
- Run Sidewords and quit, this will create a new folder in the game's data folder called "mypuzzles"
- Open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\LocalLow\Milkbag Games\Sidewords\mypuzzles (you might have to show hidden folders)
- Create a text file and give it a name that ends in ".txt" (e.g. "Cats.txt")
- Open the text file and enter up to 6 puzzles, one per line
- Each line should consist of two words, separated by a comma (no spaces)
Example: Cats.txt
SHORT,HAIR
TABBY,CAT
- The puzzles can be a maximum size of 7x8 or 8x7
- Save and close the file
- Run Sidewords and select Play from the Main Menu
- You should see a new puzzle collection called "My Puzzles", click on it
- You should see a puzzle pack with the name of your file (in our example above: "Cats"), click on it
- The game will attempt to solve each puzzle to generate hints for each one (the puzzles will be playable even if the game can't solve them)
- Open a puzzle, click the menu button in the top right, and click the Hints button. If there are no available hint words, then the game was unable to find a solution using common English words.
- If you want to create additional puzzle packs (up to 6 in total), create new text files and place them in the same "mypuzzles" folder as above
- Enjoy!
Note:
If you want to create more than the allowed 36 puzzles, copy your puzzle pack files somewhere else to store them, and replace them in the "mypuzzles" folder with new files.