Features
Hard Mode: the strictest wake-up setting in WakeWin
Hard Mode is WakeWin's global "serious" setting. Turn it on in your profile and every alarm fires under stricter rules: more puzzles, a minimum challenge time, motion verification, and (Premium) Photo Verify. Puzzles must be Medium-or-Hard difficulty (2 or 3 tickets each), and Hard Mode requires 15 puzzles per wake-up — so 30 to 45 base tickets per dismissal depending on the difficulty you pick, vs Easy's 10. Up to 4.5× the prize-draw entries before streak multipliers even kick in.
Ticket earnings by difficulty
1
per puzzle
Easy
10 per alarm
2
per puzzle
Medium
20 per alarm
3
per puzzle
Hard
45 per alarm
You choose your difficulty per alarm. Want Hard Mode on weekdays and Easy on weekends? You can do that. Hard Mode requires 15 puzzles per alarm (vs 10 for Easy/Medium), so the per-alarm totals reflect the higher puzzle count.
What Hard Mode actually requires
When global Hard Mode is on, every alarm enforces:
- • 15 puzzles minimum (instead of 10 in normal mode)
- • 90-second minimum challenge time — you can't speed-run dismissal
- • Medium difficulty floor — no Easy puzzles allowed
- • 30-second tap-to-start window — start the challenge fast or lose the streak
- • Motion verification — physically move at least 1m or 3 steps
- • Photo Verify (Premium) — photograph a household object to fully dismiss
- • Snooze disabled — no fallback path
By the time you finish 15 Hard Mode puzzles plus the motion gate plus the photo, you are awake. Not just phone-in-hand, eyes-half-open awake. Standing, walking, mentally engaged awake.
The 6 puzzle types
Mental arithmetic
Multi-step calculations. No calculator.
Word scrambles
Rearrange letters into words under time pressure.
Pattern recognition
Identify the odd one out in a sequence.
Memory challenges
Remember and reproduce a sequence shown briefly.
Number sequences
Find the next number in the series.
Stroop tests
Name the colour of the ink, not the word written in it.
Hard Mode draws from all 6 types. The specific mix varies each morning so it never gets routine.
Hard Mode + streaks = compounding odds
WakeWin tracks your consecutive-day wake-up streaks. Streak multipliers stack on top of the difficulty rate: 1× under 7 days, 1.25× from day 7, 1.5× from day 14, 1.75× from day 30, 2× from day 60 onwards.
A daily Hard Mode user with a 30-day streak earns 45 base tickets per dismissal × 30 days × 1.75× multiplier ≈ 2,360 tickets per month. A casual Easy user dismissing 10 alarms (1 ticket × 10 puzzles, no multiplier) earns 100. That's a 24× advantage from consistency + difficulty.
The Perfect Month payoff
Hard Mode is also the gateway to Perfect Month — WakeWin's ultimate Premium reward. Hit all 10 Perfect Month criteria across a full calendar month (Hard Mode on every alarm, zero snoozes, motion verified, etc.) and your next month of Premium is free. See /perfect-month for the full criteria list.
Ready to play on Hard Mode?
Join the waitlist — free, no spam.