Alexa, open Pasapalabra

Alexa, I want to play Pasapalabra (2021)

🎯 Goal and client

For Atresmedia, the main goal was for the Alexa skill to feel like taking part in the show, but from your own living room. The aim was to combine fun and challenge: after each rosco (the show’s alphabet wheel), players see where they rank on the leaderboard. And duel mode lets you play against someone who’s with you, for maximum fun.

💬 Voice interaction

“Alexa, quiero jugar a Pasapalabra” (“I want to play Pasapalabra”) makes Alexa offer you the rosco of the week from Pasapalabra, the Antena 3 TV show hosted by Roberto Leal. You can resume a rosco if you leave it halfway (because you accidentally exited the Alexa skill), and when you finish, you see your position on the global leaderboard, under a randomly generated username.

There are two game modes:

Play solo with the rosco of the week or a random rosco.
Just like on TV, you can play a duel between two contestants, blue and orange, to see who gets more right in less time.

You can ask for any type of rosco at any time. Just say “rosco de la semana” (rosco of the week), “rosco al azar” (random rosco) or “duelo” (duel).

The game works just like the show: guess the 25 words of the rosco, from A to Z. For each word you hear the definition, and you have to say the word that starts with, or contains, the current letter. The only difference from the show is that the clock counts up instead of down. Get every word in the rosco right in the shortest time possible. Once you’ve completed it, you can play it again to beat your time, or try another random rosco.

Remember, the clock keeps running during the game, so try to guess the word fast:

Say “pasapalabra” to skip to the next word.
You can wait for the microphone to open (the blue light turns on) or interrupt by saying “Alexa” followed by the word.
If you get one wrong, after hearing the right answer you can keep playing, or use the pause to ask how you’re doing by saying “cómo voy”, or even ask for the instructions by saying “ayuda” (“help”).

To stop playing, say “salir”. If you need to pause or stop the rosco, you can exit and pick it up when you open the skill again.

The official way to open the app on Alexa is: Alexa, abre Pasapalabra.

🤖 Channel

Amazon Alexa. A unique brand experience for devices without a screen (voice-first) and with a screen (multimodal).

🌍 Reach: languages and countries.

Available in every country that uses Alexa in Spanish from Spain (es-ES).

💻 Which technologies and libraries did we use?

Amazon Alexa features:

APL-A for the audio experience, very useful for mixing sounds with the voices of Alexa and Roberto Leal (the show’s host).
Dynamic Entities, for dynamically recognizing the words to guess in each rosco, since each rosco is published weekly through an API (managed by Atresmedia).
Web API for Games to display the game’s web view, with the roscos and animations, on devices with a screen.
A global leaderboard with Amazon Leaderboards and Tournaments, formerly Amazon GameOn.

💎 How did we build this voice app?

We carried out the project with Atresmedia (A3M) and Amazon Alexa. We worked on conversation design, sound design and multimodal web design. We built the Alexa skill, which also includes recordings by the show’s host, Roberto Leal. We took care over turn-taking with Alexa and built a conversational experience that holds up to the many different ways Alexa users express themselves.

🗓 Key dates

01/28/2021: Soft launch. Days spent improving the model that understands users (NLU).
03/05/2021: Featured in the weekly Amazon Alexa user newsletter.
04/06/2021: Official launch (see the show’s website, in Spanish). The skill was mentioned on the Pasapalabra show.
04/30/2021: 200,000 roscos played on the Alexa skill (see the press release, in Spanish).
05/14/2021: Featured in the weekly Amazon Alexa user newsletter.

🔗 More information

In the Spanish Amazon Alexa store: amazon.es.
On the Pasapalabra (Antena 3) website.