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Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?

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Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?

#241

Post by [deleted] »

ugh123 wrote: post #186
Y444 wrote: post #71

Product manager ex. game designer with a number of puzzle/word game in operation here. - Having a timer (urgency) is usually not a very good idea for thinky games. If you insist on having a timer consider making it count upwards. - Additionally as other commenters mentioned is the game is a time trial it needs an explicit “Start” button. Also stop the timer when user is not playing e.g. reading the rules. - There’s n…

>There’s no point of having a “Play again” option for a Wordle style daily game, the thinking part is already done, so any replay is just an exercise in dexterity. What if i'm handing it to a friend/spouse to play to beat my time? >Consider having some sort of overarching thing in your puzzle, so it’s not just five words on a specific topic to guess, but something more, like a hidden word across all five etc. This ma…

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Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?

#243

Post by SamBam »

Y444 wrote: post #194
ugh123 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There’s no point of having a “Play again” option for a Wordle style daily game, the thinking part is already done, so any replay is just an exercise in dexterity. What if i'm handing it to a friend/spouse to play to beat my time? >Consider having some sort of overarching thing in your puzzle, so it’s not just five words on a specific topic to guess, but something more, like a hidden word across all five etc. This ma…

>What if i'm handing it to a friend/spouse to play to beat my time? I generally find it more effective to improve the parts that concern most of the audience, like the timer that is seen by every player. The pass-and-play use case is valid but seems pretty rare. >That just sounds like your idea for a different type of game. I like his current idea for this game. Yes, it’s a part of giving feedback, the author might n…

> The pass-and-play use case is valid but seems pretty rare.

The NY Times Mini Crossword specifically has a "Clear" button for this very use-case.

Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?

#244

Post by oliwary »

Y444 wrote: post #71

Product manager ex. game designer with a number of puzzle/word game in operation here. - Having a timer (urgency) is usually not a very good idea for thinky games. If you insist on having a timer consider making it count upwards. - Additionally as other commenters mentioned is the game is a time trial it needs an explicit “Start” button. Also stop the timer when user is not playing e.g. reading the rules. - There’s n…

This is really good feedback I think. My puzzle has an overarching thing with down direction also forming words: https://squareword.org/

I think that would not work here as there are though as there are not enough combinations. I quite like this one though, combining the unscramble mechanic with a category. A bit like a combination of connections and waffle.

For the "play again" issue, in my latest game https://spaceword.org I made it an open-ended puzzle, where there is no correct answer, so people can keep improving as long as they want.

Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?

#245

Post by SamBam »

jamesdhutton wrote: post #220

It was fun. Couple of suggestions: - It gave me “TCAAN” which stumped me. Afterwards I pasted it into the Internet Anagram Server, which failed to find any acronyms for it. So I can say with some confidence I don’t think it’s a valid word. Suggest making sure you’re using a dictionary similar to Wordle’s one. - The game should reveal the solution at the end if the player fails to guess any words.

The game ought to make it explicit that proper names are allowed.

But, personally, I would remove proper names, to make it more like most other word games (wordle, spelling bee, jumble, etc.). Crosswords do have proper names, but they've got the clue context to go with them.

Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?

#250

Post by wordglyph »

oliwary wrote: post #244
Y444 wrote: post #71

Product manager ex. game designer with a number of puzzle/word game in operation here. - Having a timer (urgency) is usually not a very good idea for thinky games. If you insist on having a timer consider making it count upwards. - Additionally as other commenters mentioned is the game is a time trial it needs an explicit “Start” button. Also stop the timer when user is not playing e.g. reading the rules. - There’s n…

This is really good feedback I think. My puzzle has an overarching thing with down direction also forming words: https://squareword.org/ I think that would not work here as there are though as there are not enough combinations. I quite like this one though, combining the unscramble mechanic with a category. A bit like a combination of connections and waffle. For the "play again" issue, in my latest game https://space…

You got some fun games! I like your simple direction ui on spaceword. And I enjoyed the time it took to solve square word. It's good to have play again so players can get better. I implemented it on https://wordglyph.xyz for same reasons. It's nice to see players discover the stick strategy over time and get better.
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