This online puzzle community has a fresh twist on battle passes

Everyone seems to want in on newspaper-style casual gaming. While The New York Times is leading the way with Wordle and its iconic crossword, major companies ranging from Netflix to LinkedIn are trying to carve out a place as well. So, when game designer Zach Gage, cofounder of the Hearst-owned site Puzzmo, started exploring the space, he knew the project needed more than great games. He says the goal was to “design a website that isn’t just links to games but is in fact a deeper community experience.” That’s why Puzzmo launched last year with a handful of titles and multiplayer features like leaderboards.

Now both of those aspects are expanding with a new game that’s also introducing new ways to play — inspired by some of the biggest online shooters around.

Back in June, the site introduced Pile-Up Poker, a game that takes the rules of poker — namely the various hands — and turns it into a solitaire-like experience with the goal of earning a high score in the form of virtual cash. It’s a great addition to Puzzmo’s growing library of word games and other puzzles. It also came with a communitywide goal for everyone to work toward: earning a collective $1 trillion of in-game money. The idea is that every Puzzmo player contributes a little bit each day over time by playing Pile-Up Poker and racking up dollars. (Games like Fortnite have similarly experimented with these kinds of collective goals.)

As the community pot grows closer to the goal, new features will be added for everyone. At launch, there was a deck of physical cards designed by BoJack Horseman artist Lisa Hanawalt, and just last week, Puzzmo added the option for clubs — in-game friend groups — to have their own custom, game-specific leaderboards so they can compare scores in TypeShift or Really Bad Chess. The tool is built to be flexible, so people can create hyperspecific ways to play with their friends.

This idea of ongoing support and updates comes from the battle passes found in games like Fortnite and League of Legends. Gage is a hardcore Apex Legends player (he even does meetings inside of the shooter) and believes that the nature of a battle pass, with goals that encourage daily play, can nurture a more dedicated audience. “When you play every day, you start to care about the patch notes,” he explains. “It turns you into a quality community member instead of a person who is just stepping in and playing the game. You become invested.”

There are downsides, of course. A typical battle pass requires a huge investment from the developer to constantly make new in-game items for players, like Fortnite’s never-ending production line of skins. Daily missions can also become checklists for players rather than fun experiences. “Sometimes I have found myself playing a battle pass and wondered, ‘What am I doing? Why am I even playing this game right now? This is a waste of my time,’” Gage says. “That is a feeling that I don’t want anyone to have with any game that I’m making.”

Community objectives like the Pile-Up Poker pot, which are designed sort of like Kickstarter stretch goals, solve these problems in a few ways. They don’t require much additional work for the developers since the upcoming features were already part of the roadmap. And players don’t experience the same kind of FOMO because, even if you miss a day or two, the rest of the community is still building toward those goals. At the same time, the process of hitting such a huge number has given a nice jolt to the community, according to Gage, citing vibrant discussions in the Puzzmo Discord. (He notes that the $1 trillion figure was chosen simply because “it sounded cool.”)

The hope is that the combination of all of those elements — friends groups, community goals, a deep and growing library of games — will be what it takes for Puzzmo to go up against its entrenched competition. “Everybody who we are competing with is trying to make a crossword that has the gravitas of The New York Times crossword,” says Gage. “But nobody is building a community around their crossword. That is the appeal of the New York Times crossword — there’s community. You can do it and talk to your friends about it.”