Squabble is Wordle Battle Royale, and It’s Incredibly Intense – CNET

We have officially hit Wordle critical mass.

How do I know this? Because the inevitable has happened. After multiple different variants of the game have popped up over the past few months, someone has created a battle royale version of Wordle. It’s called Squabble, and it’s utterly insane. This is the Wordle endgame. It’s over now. Everything is over.

Once again, for the two people on the planet who somehow don’t know what Wordle is…

Wordle is the daily online word game that’s sent the world wild. In Wordle, players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word. Simple, but also incredibly compelling, to the point where Wordle creator Josh Wardle sold the game to The New York Times for a figure in the low millions.

Battle royale is a game type popularized by the movie Battle Royale and, more recently, the video game Fortnite. In battle royale games, large groups of players battle until only one is left.

Squabble does the unthinkable. It combines Wordle and battle royale, creating an unholy abomination that is simply way too intense for normal human beings to consume. I should know — I have played it. I’m still in recovery.

In Squabble, you compete in a Wordle race against multiple other human players. That means you have to go fast. As someone who plays Wordle patiently, carefully considering my next move, this is the most anxiety inducing situation I could ever consider placing myself in. Your mileage may vary. 

There are two modes. Blitz is a smaller scale match between up to five players. Battle Royale can host up to 99 players. 

It plays a little differently compared with most Wordle clones. Every player has health points that slowly reduce. Guessing the right letters and words increases your health points. Do nothing and it slowly trickles down. It’s incredibly, incredibly stressful and sort of fun? Actually, I’m not convinced this is fun.

The game also has a replay mode that allows you to watch the whole game play out, complete with all the words and letters people chose. There’s something really compelling and hypnotizing about watching all these games of Wordle playing in tandem.

Squabble is crazy, and may cause you to have a mental breakdown, but I recommend playing it at least once.