Behind the Game: How We Built Circle Back in 3 Weeks

[OUTLINE — 200 words]

Target keyword: "how to build a daily puzzle game" (also captures: "indie game launch", "circle back origin story", "innmotion games", "wordle style game build")

Internal links: pillar post (01), buzzword bingo origin (05), homepage

Opening angle (100 words): "The idea came from a meeting. Not a planning meeting, not a workshop. A regular Tuesday meeting where three different people used three different phrases that all meant 'we're not going to decide this today.' The idea was simple: turn corporate jargon into a daily puzzle, give it to the people who have to sit through those meetings, and let the decode be the punchline. Three weeks from idea to launch. This is how it worked."

Structure:

Section 1: The Idea The origin moment. The observation that corporate jargon is a translation problem, not a vocabulary problem. The gap in the market: dozens of static buzzword-bingo sites, zero daily puzzle versions. The Wordle effect: proof that a single shared daily puzzle with a shareable result builds genuine habit.

Section 2: The Brief The constraints that shaped the product:

• No login, no install, no payment
• Daily refresh at 9am Melbourne time
• Share artifact that pastes cleanly into Slack and Teams
• Four phrases per puzzle, eight options to match against
• Streak tracked in the browser, not a server
• No ongoing manual work once the puzzle pool was seeded

These constraints are explained in plain English — not a technical spec, but a description of the product decisions and why each one was made. (The "no login" decision is explained as an explicit anti-friction choice — every step between opening the page and playing the puzzle costs players.)

Section 3: The Build Non-technical description of how the technical side works:

• The puzzle pool: how 500 puzzles were generated, reviewed, and seeded before launch
• The daily rotation: how the browser picks the right puzzle for today without talking to a server
• The 9am Melbourne cutover: why this matters (office culture is morning-oriented; the share happens at morning tea, not afternoon)
• The share artifact: why plain text beats an image for office sharing
• The weekly refresh: how new puzzles get added without manual work

Section 4: The Corpus How the jargon library was built. The seven categories (verbs of inaction, empty-vessel nouns, time-warping, hierarchy-encoded passive aggression, performative acceptance, meeting theatre, restructuring euphemisms). Why the AU-specific voice matters (the decodes are written in Australian English, not American corporate English). How the difficulty curve works across the week.

Section 5: What We Got Wrong Honest reflection. At least two things that needed fixing after the first week. Written in a tone that is self-aware without being performatively humble. Specific examples, not vague acknowledgments.

Section 6: What's Next Brief mention of v2 thinking — archive access, leaderboard, potential sister products (Email Decoder, Deck Decoder). Nothing committed. Honest about what traction will drive.

Section 7: Who Built This Short InnMotion credit. One paragraph. No full pitch. Tone: "This is what we do — build software products for real problems. Circle Back is the lightest version of that. If you want to see the heavier stuff, [link to innmotion.com.au]."

Closing: The game is free. Always will be in this form. The puzzle pool runs for over a year. Come back tomorrow.