Every day, roughly 70 percent of college students engage in playing video, computer, or online games, according to the PEW Research Center. Sixty-five percent of those college students surveyed claim to be regular game players.
Many app games such as Words With Friends, Draw Something and Candy Crush Saga top the “most downloaded” or “most played” charts, according to many mobile app stores.
MoWo, short for “More Words,” is a new and free word game, similar to Words With Friends, that was created in a month by University of Alabama student Hakeen Hasan.
“From looking at other popular word games out there, I took note on what they did well, and where they went wrong. From that I tried to combine the two aspects into this game (MoWo),” senior electrical engineering major Hasan said.
“I’ve had this idea for the word game for over a year now, but I finally got the chance to work on it this past December,” Hakeem said.
Hakeem said that he was interested in mobile development, particularly Android.
The student also said creating the game was a tedious task, and his biggest challenge when creating the app was focusing on the multi-player mode and making sure that the match making processes were done right as well as maintaining account security.
“Not only was I learning Android development but also how to program in Java at the same time. This led to a lot of Google searches on how to get things done,” he said.
Chelsea Bratton, junior biology major and chemistry minor at Georgia State, said that she feels as though that MoWo has great potential as an app but still lacks in development for the multi-player mode.
“I feel as though the game would be better in multi-player mode if there were more people that were aware that MoWo existed. There just aren’t enough players at the moment,” she said.
Bratton also said that one of the features she loved about MoWo is that people have the option to play in single-player mode. She compared this to the popular app Words with Friends, which doesn’t have this option available.
Hasan has recently created another game called “Spots” for Android.
“My intention for making this game was my response to Flappy Birds: making a simple, addicting, yet challenging game,” he said.
Spots is based on the game “Simon Says,” and the game also allows individuals to play in multiplayer mode.
“The player is originally given four spots that will light up in random order and the player has to repeat this pattern. The game gets hard fairly quick as more spots are added and the patterns get longer and faster,” Hasan said.
Hasan also said that there are a lot of unforeseen roadblocks when it comes to programming.
“…Even when you think everything is perfect something can go wrong,” he said.
Hasan said others interested in creating their own apps shouldn’t give up or get frustrated in the process because he feels that the end product is much more satisfying after all of the work.
To play the game, Hasan said that a each player is given eight letters at one time, and then from those letters their objective is to create words without repeating ones they’ve created previously.
Hasan said that he felt as though that his mobile app distinguished itself from other mobile games such as Words with Friends because of its simple style and game-play. He also said that it is different because mobile games such as Words with Friends and Letterpress are multi-player only.
Due to the app only being available for Android devices, Hasan said that he is currently learning how to program so that MoWo is available for the iPhone and iPad.
“This should take some time. I also have classes, projects, and job interviews so I don’t have as much free time as I would like to put towards the iOS version,” he said.
Hasan also said that if he were to give an estimated time for when the iOS version would be complete, it would be June at the earliest.
“Hopefully by then the Android version will be more popular so when iPhone users join in, they have plenty of users to play against online,” Hasan said.
Hasan said that he hopes that by creating MoWo, it will serve as an example to those with little to no prior programming experience.
“If I can do this with little to no programming background, anyone can,” he said.
