USA TODAY Games, unified in one real-time platform.
A multi-vertical interactive entertainment platform built for USA TODAY / Gannett: bringing crossword and sudoku gameplay, a comics viewer, and a daily horoscope experience together under a single API-driven frontend with consistent UX, real-time content delivery, and continuous engagement features across every vertical.
Project overview
USA TODAY games and entertainment properties: crosswords, sudoku, comics, and horoscopes, were fragmented across separate experiences with inconsistent UX, limited interactivity outside the puzzle formats, and no unified architecture connecting them. Different sections felt like different products. The engagement with RTW was about fixing that at the platform level.
RTW built a modular, component-based frontend in Next.js and React, connected to multiple content APIs through a normalization layer that resolved the format differences between puzzle game data, comics feeds, and horoscope content. Every vertical: puzzles, comics, horoscopes, renders through shared UI components and a unified navigation layer. Content is delivered in real time via GraphQL APIs, with dynamic routing between entertainment verticals and state management for interactive gameplay.
This is a portfolio entry rather than a case study. The engagement is ongoing: active retainer from 2023 with continuous feature expansion across all three verticals. The modular architecture means new entertainment formats can be added without rebuilding the core frontend.
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Project details
Entertainment platforms built to scale.
Fragmented products that feel like different teams built them: we have seen this problem and built the unified solution for a national audience. Modular architecture, shared component system, API-first delivery.
