4 Years Ago I Built A Wordle Clone

Analysis

Actorle shows a credible 4-year durability story, but the exact current ~10k DAU / ~$3k per month claim is only indirectly corroborated.

Bottom Line

• The project behind the post is almost certainly actorle.com, created by Laszlo Kiss in Budapest during the March 2022 Wordle wave.

• Public primary and secondary sources consistently support the broader story: built in a few days, grew via viral sharing, expanded into multiple spin-offs, and monetized mainly with ads.

• The strongest hard numbers are older but directionally consistent with the Reddit claim: about $4.2k/mo in Oct 2022 and still around $4k/mo in Oct 2024.

• Because Reddit blocked direct fetches, the exact 2026 figures of ~10k DAU and ~$3k/mo should be treated as plausible but not independently verified from the original post body.

What The Evidence Says

1. The product identity lines up cleanly

• The bonixs aggregator preserved the Reddit post headline exactly: 4 years ago I built a Wordle clone in 3 days. It still does ~10k DAU and ~3k USD/mo.

• The same bonixs feed summary adds the crucial identifying detail: In March 2022, when Wordle was peak hype, I (dev and movie nerd from Budapest) thought "Wordle but for actors." Spent 3 days hacking it together and shipped actorle.com.

• That points directly to https://actorle.com/, which matches Laszlo Kiss's later public interviews about Actorle.

• Source URLs: https://www.bonixs.com/data/feed.json, https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1t5d028/4_years_ago_i_built_a_wordle_clone_in_3_days_it/, https://actorle.com/

2. The "built fast during Wordle mania" claim is well supported

• Hey.gg quotes Kiss saying: In March 2022, I created actorle.com and What started as a fun side project built in just three days has now become my main focus.

• The same interview explains the idea source: When Wordle exploded in popularity, it sparked an idea. As a movie enthusiast, I thought, "Why not create something similar for film lovers?"

• Indie Hackers independently matches the framing with the title How did I create a game with $4,000 monthly revenue in 3 days?

• Source URLs: https://www.hey.gg/blog/actorle, https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-did-i-create-a-game-with-4-000-monthly-revenue-in-3-days-49b598a252

3. Growth came from a viral sharing loop, not paid acquisition

• A SearX snippet for the Reddit thread says: The Wordle-style shareable score grid is what carried Actorle.

• Hey.gg gives the mechanism in more detail: By far, the most effective growth strategy was implementing a feature that allowed players to share their scores on Twitter.

• Hey.gg also quantifies the growth arc: We went from 500 daily users to thousands, then tens of thousands.

• That makes the current ~10k DAU claim feel directionally believable, especially for a daily game with a long-tail audience, even though there is no direct independent DAU dashboard in public.

• Source URLs: http://localhost:8888/search?q=actorle.com%20Wordle%20clone%20traffic%20revenue&format=json, https://www.hey.gg/blog/actorle

4. Revenue evidence is strong, and mostly ad-driven

• The best hard breakdown is from an Indie Hackers comment by Kiss in Oct 2022:

• website ads on actorle.com: $3600

• website ads on actorle.tv: $300

• mobile ads with Admob on Android: $20

• mobile ads with Admob on iOS: $150

• mobile IAP on Android: $10

• mobile IAP on IOS: $150

• That totals roughly $4,230/mo, and it shows the business was overwhelmingly a web-ad business, not an app business.

• Hey.gg says the model remained durable in 2024: two years after launch, Actorle still generates around $4,000 monthly, with minimal ongoing effort.

• Source URLs: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-did-i-create-a-game-with-4-000-monthly-revenue-in-3-days-49b598a252, https://www.hey.gg/blog/actorle

5. The site still looks like a living business, not an abandoned artifact

• The current Actorle homepage includes active monetization and product-surface signals: a Snigel ad loader, Plausible analytics, App Store link, Google Play link, and links to related properties including actorle.tv and moviedle.xyz.

• The homepage JSON-LD describes a broader product family: A daily actor and movie guessing game featuring multiple game modes including Fill The Grid, Storyboard, StarWords, and multiplayer Board Game.

• The Apple App Store listing also ties the mobile product to the same brand: From the creators of actorle.com.

• Source URLs: https://actorle.com/, https://apps.apple.com/us/app/actorle/id1620858489

6. External coverage supports the long-tail cultural footprint

• Mashable featured Actorle among Wordle alternatives for movie fans, which supports the idea that the game broke out beyond a tiny niche and benefited from media amplification.

• Hey.gg also says Mashable exposure helped the game jump from hundreds of daily users to much larger traffic.

• Source URLs: https://mashable.com/article/framed-actorle-movie-wordle, https://www.hey.gg/blog/actorle

Assessment Of The Current Claim

• Built a Wordle clone in 3 days: strongly supported.

• Still does ~10k DAU: plausible, but only indirectly supported through Reddit snippets plus prior evidence that the product reached tens of thousands of daily users and still operated actively years later.

• Still does ~$3k/mo: plausible and arguably conservative relative to the documented ~$4.2k/mo in 2022 and ~$4k/mo in 2024, but still not independently confirmed for 2026.

Why This Story Matters

• Actorle is a good example of a narrow, culturally legible game riding an existing habit loop rather than inventing a new one.

• The real moat was not technical complexity; it was theme selection, social sharing, repeat daily play, and enough persistence to survive the post-launch dip.

• The business appears to have settled into a classic long-tail indie-web pattern: modest but durable audience, ad-heavy monetization, spin-offs for adjacent niches, and low maintenance overhead.

Sources

• https://www.bonixs.com/data/feed.json

• https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1t5d028/4_years_ago_i_built_a_wordle_clone_in_3_days_it/

• https://actorle.com/

• https://www.hey.gg/blog/actorle

• https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-did-i-create-a-game-with-4-000-monthly-revenue-in-3-days-49b598a252

• https://mashable.com/article/framed-actorle-movie-wordle

• https://apps.apple.com/us/app/actorle/id1620858489