---
title: "Letter tiles and selection"
package: "@phaser-ae/letter-tiles"
tier: Pro
version: 3.0.0-1
released: 2026-10-21
updated: 2026-10-21
description: "Draws any word game's letters on tiles, follows the drag that selects them and shows each selection as one stroke, from a clean line to neon or fire."
url: https://phaser.io/packs/letter-tiles
site: Phaser - https://phaser.io
---

# Letter tiles and selection

Every word game draws letters on tiles and lets a player drag across them, and every one has to get the same fiddly
things right. This pack does them once: tiles laid out and lettered, a drag that picks the right tiles, a stroke whose
joins always meet, and an answer animated the moment your rules give it.

## What it does

A board lays tiles out as a grid (with holes for a shaped puzzle), a ring, a row or any points you give, and letters
them from a typography font, baked once per letter so a letter that changes never lays text out again. Each tile has a
state, and each state a colour, size and opacity in the style; changes ease rather than jump, and tiles pop, bounce,
shake, turn over and glide on cue.

Selection comes in four gestures: touching tiles one after another, any tiles in any order with an elastic tail to the
finger, a straight line snapped to eight directions, or taps. A tile joins only when the pointer comes near its middle,
so a fast diagonal swipe does not catch the tile it passes, and going back onto the previous tile takes the last off.
When the pointer lets go, the board asks your `judge` and animates the verdict: an accept bounces the tiles, flashes
and throws sparks, and can stay on the board as a coloured highlight; a reject shakes and flashes red.

The selection is painted as one stroke through the tile centres, so its width, caps and joins always agree, and a
sprite shader over it gives it an effect sized in tiles, not pixels: a soft glow, a neon tube, flames licking up off
it, electric arcs crawling along it, a flowing rainbow, glitter or a highlighter pen, or a shader of your own.

## Features

- **Four layouts** — `grid` (with a `mask` for holes), `ring`, `row` and `points`, all centred where you say.
- **Five ready styles** — `cream`, `slate`, `candy`, `glass` and `ink`, or your own shape, bevel, colours and states.
- **States you name** — `selected`, `found` and the rest, plus your own (`correct`, `present`, `absent`), each eased in.
- **Four gestures** — `path`, `free`, `line` and `tap`, with backtracking, a forgiving hit test and a length limit.
- **Your rules, its animation** — `canAdd` decides each tile and `judge` each word; the board shows the answer.
- **One matched stroke** — round joins and caps that always meet, with an elastic tail to the finger.
- **Eight stroke effects** — clean, glow, neon, fire, electric, rainbow, sparkle and highlighter, or any sprite shader.
- **Kept highlights** — found words stay, each in the next colour of a palette, as in a word search.
- **Tile animation** — pop, bounce, shake, flip to a new letter or state, glide to a new layout or a shuffled order.
- **Reusable boards** — `relayout` glides tiles to a new layout and size, adding and taking off tiles, so one board
  serves every word of a game.
- **Traced selections** — `trace` plays a path tile by tile through the same judge: solvers, hints and typed words.
- **Particle bursts** — sparks, confetti or stars from a found word's tiles when `particles-2d` is composed.

## Good for

- **Letter grids**, a trace through touching tiles with the rules' `canExtend` as `canAdd`.
- **Letter wheels**, a ring of letters traced in any order, shuffled with `arrange`.
- **Word searches**, straight-line selection and a coloured highlight for every word found.
- **Guessing games**, rows that turn over to their marks and a keyboard of tap tiles that takes each letter's colour.
- **Racks and word builders**, a row of tiles that pops each new letter in.
- **Crosswords**, cells as points that turn over as words are found.

## Make it yours

A board takes its layout, letters, style (a name or your own `TileStyle` with any states), layer and depth, selection
mode and rules, stroke (effect, colour, width, opacity, elastic, dots) and entrance; `board.stroke` changes live.
Effects are sprite shader definitions sized in tiles, so a game can copy one from `STROKE_EFFECTS` and change it.

Two materially different boards: a seven-by-seven grid of slate tiles in `path` mode with a fire stroke and wrapping
edges allowed by `canAdd`; and a ring of six candy letters in `free` mode with a neon stroke and a soft elastic tail.
A third is a row of tiles in `tap` mode, the keys of an on-screen keyboard.

## A quick look

A letter grid's board, with the rules deciding:

```ts
const board = game.letterTiles.board({
    layout: { kind: 'grid', cols: 4, rows: 4, x: 400, y: 320, cell: 90 },
    letters: round.observation().tiles, style: 'cream',
    select: {
        mode: 'path',
        canAdd: (path, tile) => round.canExtend(path, tile),
        judge: path => round.trace(path).ok ? 'accept' : 'reject',
    },
    stroke: { effect: 'fire' },
});
```

## Works with

- `typography` — required: the letters are baked from its fonts.
- `sprite-shaders` — required: the stroke effects are its shaders.
- `particles-2d` — optional: bursts when a word is found.
- `word-guess`, `word-search`, `letter-grid` and `letter-wheel` — the rules it draws in their demos.
- `english-words` — the words behind any game it draws.

## Good to know

- It knows no rules; a board without a `judge` lets every selection fade.
- Tiles are square in their layout; a wider key is a board of its own.
- Letters appear when their font has arrived, and not at all in a headless run.
- The stroke's shader runs over the board's area while a selection shows; on a slow device prefer `clean` or `glow`.

## Changes

### 3.0.0-1 (2026-10-21)

- Fixed: a `relayout` to fewer tiles no longer throws at the next draw when a highlight, a trace or a selection names
  a tile it takes off. Such a highlight goes, a trace through one stops unjudged, and a selection keeps its tiles before
  the first one taken off.
- Fixed: setting a tile's `letter` or `state`, `setLetters` without `flip` and `relayout`'s `letters` now win over a
  flip still to land that change, so a reused board never shows a letter from the last game. Added `tile.flipping` and
  `tile.cancelFlip()`.
- Fixed: tiles a `relayout` adds arrive one after another, `stagger` seconds apart (a new option, 0.03 by default), and
  every popping tile springs as it arrives, the first one included. Each new tile keeps its own entrance, so a fade
  fades in on a board that pops.
- Improved: `relayout` and `arrange` ease each tile's size with its place instead of snapping it, and a `duration` of 0
  moves the tiles at once.
- Fixed: a `relayout` that changes a board's size no longer adds two stroke canvases every time. Boards reuse the
  pack's canvases, and a destroyed board's go to the next board that fits them.
- Added: `board.burst` changes an accepted word's particles while playing, and `burst` in the board's options, a
  verdict or `accept` takes a particles-2d recipe of your own; a verdict or `accept` can name a preset for that word.
- Improved: `select`, `trace`, `accept`, `reject` and `highlight` throw at once for an index that is not a tile of the
  board, and `relayout` and `arrange` for a negative or non-numeric `duration`.

---

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