Anti-word game is Hatchlings’ second app released this week

What’s now Alphabrawl—the second app to be released in the Apple App Store by the Hatchlings team this week—began as a game founder Brad Dwyer played growing up. “My sister, my cousins and I would play it on road trips as kids,” Dwyer told Silicon Prairie News…


Alphabrawl, an “anti-word” game from the Hatchlings team, is the startup’s second iOS app release this week.

What’s now Alphabrawl—the second app to be released in the Apple App Store by the Hatchlings team this week—began as a game founder Brad Dwyer played growing up. 

“My sister, my cousins and I would play it on road trips as kids,” Dwyer told Silicon Prairie News. 

During a 2012 Startup Weekend in Des Moines, the Hatchlings team began to more seriously develop the idea, which was then called Battle Type. The team took second place in the competition and continued to work on the game alongside its other products into 2013. 

Billed as an “anti-word game,” Alphabrawl challenges players to force their opponent into being the first to create a word.

“Unlike other word games, the object of Alphabrawl is to avoid spelling a complete word,” the app description states. “Whoever does finish the word in play loses.

“Each player is given an arsenal of letters (from A-Z), which they take turns placing at the beginning or end of the word in progress. The first player to lay the letter that creates a real word loses.”

The free app is available for iOS devices. 

“We started working on it and had a test version that we kind of showed it for the first time publicly at our fifth birthday party in February,” Dwyer said. 

In May, Dwyer and the rest of the Hatchlings team presented Alphabrawl in its new form at Des Moines’ 1 Million Cups.

“We’ve been working on it on and off since then, but this fall is when we decided we nedeed to focus more time on it and get it out to see what people thought,” he said.

It’s been a busy week for the Des Moines startup—on Tuesday, the team released the Hatchlings Match app, an iOS version of the popular game that until recently had only been available on Facebook. The game challenges players to pair Easter egg tops with their bottoms before time runs out.

Alphabrawl marks the first game the team has created outside of its Hatchlings brand.  

 “We certainly have a ton of other ideas likes this,” Dwyer said. “We don’t really know which ones are going to be priorities though—if it’s more stand-alone games like Alphabrawl or more spin-off games from Hatchlings. It’ll depend on how things go and how this launch goes with the other launches we’ve been doing.”

 

Credits: Product photos from Apple App Store

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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