Wordle is one of those games that very quickly became a phenomenon, landing in lockdown and finding a world that was very ready to go toe-to-toe with friends and family over who could guess a five-letter word first. Such was the game's success that it was acquired by the New York Times in January 2022, and since then has had pride of place in the Gray Lady's games section.
Then, the nukes launched and no-one's streak survived. Fast-forward to 2281 in the Mojave wasteland, and one intrepid modder has set out to change that situation. Wordlehack adds Wordle to Fallout: New Vegas via the medium of the game's hacking terminals, which are dotted about all over the place. You can choose to have it on all the terminals in the world or just a selection, and when you interact with them you have to guess a five-letter word in six attempts.
The mod may be straightforward but it's also well thought-out and adds a bunch of new features (all configurable via the INI) for your maximum Wordle enjoyment. It boasts controller support, now includes four-letter and six-letter variants of the game, difficulty settings for each lock level (so for example "harder terminals now tend to have shorter words or fewer attempts"), and even customisable fonts.
Modder W00Z says Wordlehack boasts "over 2000 possible answers and over 10000 possible guesses, just like the real thing", but if that's not good enough then "a dictionary-agnostic implementation [will] let you replace those dictionaries with any others, or modify the existing ones at will." You can set the exact percentage of terminals in the world that have Wordle on them, whether the terminals remember half-played games or reset, and successfully completing a Wordle rewards you with XP based on the terminal lock difficulty. The cherry on the cake? "A locked out terminal can be accessed again with the Computer Whiz perk."
W00Z promises more improvements to come, and the priority is game statistics and streaks (the mod is already quietly tracking scores, even if it doesn't yet share them). You can grab Wordlehack here, and see the mod in action below.
Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."
