Today I am happy to announce that after months of effort and tinkering, we are releasing to the public our latest iPhone game: Word Hack!

Word Hack is a simple word game we’ve created that adds a colorful twist to Hangman and Wheel of Fortune. In Word Hack, the object of each puzzle is to guess the word hidden behind a series of colored blanks.

You solve each puzzle by dragging color-coated letters of the alphabet into a the blanks in the puzzle that share the same color. Wrong answers count against you and your time is limited, making Word Hack a raise against the clock to solve each puzzle.

Why We’re Launching Exclusively in Canada

Sounds like fun? We think it is, but unless you hail from the Great White North (that’s Canada for the geographically confused), you’l just have to take our word for it.

Today we’re making Word Hack exclusively available for free download in the Canadian iTunes Marketplace.

Yes Blue Label Labs is located here in bustle of New York City, and yes we love freedom and reality TV, so then why would we choose to launch Word Hack in Canada and not right here in the USA?!

Well Canada has got more going for it than just socialized medicine and Ketchup chips, it has a well-educated, English-speaking, urban population of 33 million that has very similar taste in apps as the US.

As much as Canadians are loathe to admit, we really aren’t that different than from Americans. That makes Canada a great testbed for app developers across the world to test their app with real American-esque users before actually launching in the US.

By launching in Canada, we look to iterate Word Hack based on real user engagement data we collect via tools like Flurry and Tapstream.

Through Facebook mobile app install campaigns targeted at Canadian iPhone users and press outreach to Canadian media outlets, we’re hoping to test our marketing and messaging before we invest heavily on a flashy US launch.

A Canada first strategy lets indie app developers like us maximize our limited budgets and manpower when we do launch in the USA.

Now I’d love to tell you that our Canada-first release strategy boils down to marketing and strategy, but it runs deeper than that. Both my cofounder and I are Canadians born and bred in the icy tundras of Toronto, who like many of our fellow Canadians now make our living below the border in the American tech sector.

Launching our latest app in Canada first just feels like the right thing to do.

Canada you’ve had a long winter, warm up a bit and play some Word Hack.

Word Hack is free to download on the iTunes Marketplace. Stay up to date on the US launch of Word Hack by signing up for updates at http://www.wordhackapp.com.

Canadians! Download Word Hack here.