I'm interested to read your comments about Ozlip, 3-B, and I'll be interested to see any thoughts other people post here. I suspect the design is not a complete success.
I actually started out with the mobile phone version, but I wanted to complement that with a Web version that would have exactly the same functions, but with necessarily a very different "look and feel". The mobile version has different displays for high scores, options, etc, etc, but I put all that together on the screen for the computer version. But then it seemed to be looking cluttered, so I decided to hide a lot of the features and just start with buttons for things like the high scores. The end result, I think, is probably a bit confusing.
I'm a lot happier with it as a mobile phone game, but its sales were very low, even when it was being sold by Telstra, the biggest phone company in Australia. In fact the generic game Lexi (the mobile version of Letterbox) always outsold it. I suspect there might have been a "cultural cringe" factor: people assumed if the game was Australian it would be second rate. So I won't be in a hurry to make any more Australian-themed games.
But as for Letterbox, it was my first game, and the one that required the most innovative thinking, in working out how to get the computer to play a good game without cheating. And there doesn't seem to be anything else quite like it. (
Euler's day off resembles it in some ways. I'd like to use that concept - of knowing all the letters from the start - but with a more graphical and interactive design.)
I've rather neglected Letterbox for the last couple of years, but I think it has loads of potential for variations on the basic concept. It probably needs a complete make-over, to add some of the good features of Ozlip, and an online high score table and other interactive features. For now, I'm thinking of adding a couple of options: one to have the letters better reflect their frequency in the word list, so you won't get as many Qs, Xs and Zs; and the other, to have the Q come with a U attached (as is the case already in Ozlip).