Spotify Bought a Wordle Clone, You Can Play It for Free

Wordle was everyone’s favorite word puzzle game for a brief period earlier this year, spawning countless clone games with twists on the core gameplay. Spotify has now acquired one of the most popular clones: Heardle.

Heardle is a game where you are given the first second of a popular song, and if you can guess the song correctly, you win — if not, you have five more tries, with each attempt doubling the length of the preview. It’s the same core gameplay as Wordle, where you have six tries to guess a random five-letter word, but with segments of music instead of letters.

Spotify announced in a press release, “we see Heardle as more than a trivia game: It’s also a tool for musical discovery. Playing Heardle might just help you to rediscover old tracks you may have thought you’d forgotten, discover amazing new artists, or finally put a title to that wordless melody you’ve had caught in your head forever.”

The company says that Heardle will remain freely accessible, though that’s not entirely true — the game is now region-locked to the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Spotify plans to expand the availability soon, but that has already locked out many existing players.

The other main difference now is that a link to the guessed song on Spotify is available after the game ends. Spotify said, “further down the road, we are also planning to integrate Heardle and other interactive experiences more fully into Spotify to allow music lovers to connect more deeply with artists and challenge friends.”

Source: Spotify