CodleC: Building a Wordle Clone in C

👋 Hey DEV Community!

I recently built CodleC — a Wordle-inspired game in pure C that runs in your terminal with ANSI colors, hints, and JSON persistence. Here’s how I did it!

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What is CodleC?

A 5-letter word-guessing game where:

🟩 Green = Correct letter & position.

🟨 Yellow = Correct letter, wrong position.

⬜ Gray = Letter not in the word.

Features:

✅ 3 difficulty levels (Easy: 7 guesses, Hard: 5).
✅ Limited hints (4 per game, 30s cooldown).
✅ Virtual keyboard (shows letter status).
✅ Saves results in results.json.

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Key Technical Challenges

1. Terminal Colors (ANSI Escape Codes)

Used ANSI codes for cross-platform colors:

#define GREEN "\033[42m\033[30m"  
printf("%s V %s Correct!", GREEN, RESET);  

Windows fix:

#include <windows.h>  
SetConsoleOutputCP(CP_UTF8);  // Enable UTF-8 

2. Real-Time Input (No "Enter" Needed)

Windows: _getch() (from conio.h).

Linux/macOS: termios raw mode.

char get_char() {  
    #ifdef _WIN32  
        return _getch();  
    #else  
        // Disable input buffering  
        struct termios old, new;  
        tcgetattr(0, &old);  
        new = old;  
        new.c_lflag &= ~(ICANON | ECHO);  
        tcsetattr(0, TCSANOW, &new);  
        char c = getchar();  
        tcsetattr(0, TCSANOW, &old);  
        return c;  
    #endif  
}  

3. Hint System with Cooldown

time_t last_hint_time;  

if (time(NULL) - last_hint_time >= 30) {  
    reveal_random_letter();  
} else {  
    printf("Wait %d sec!", 30 - (time(NULL) - last_hint_time));  
}  

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Cool Features

• JSON Persistence

{"word": "CRANE", "guesses": 3, "difficulty": "HARD"}

• Dynamic Keyboard https://via.placeholder.com/400x100?text=Virtual+Keyboard+Demo

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Try It Yourself!

🔗 GitHub: https://github.com/DamiaoArth/CodleC

Includes:

Full source code (main.c).
Pre-built binaries (Windows/Linux).
Portuguese word lists (easy to swap).

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💬 Discussion
Ever built a terminal game? Share your experiences below!

Ideas to improve CodleC? (Thinking of adding a global leaderboard!)

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References:

ANSI Escape Codes
Wordle (NYT)
Letreco
TERMOOO

c #gamedev #terminal #wordle #opensource

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PS: Can you beat my high score of 3 guesses on Hard mode?