I've never felt more disconnected from pop culture than now. The quantity of posts that just ASSUMED people knew what the hell Wordle was helped me realize that I do, indeed, live under a rock.
Show HN: Three Magic Words
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Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#72I really like the execution on this. One piece of feedback is that the timer gave me anxiety and I closed it. I do puzzles to phase out from stress not to challenge myself in a time bound environment
I hear you. I personally found the game less interesting before I added the "threat" of losing stars — it felt to me more like trial-and-error work. However, I think there is value in embracing its more meditative side and offering untimed (and I supposed, star-less) play as well.
The casual nature of Wordle is one of its biggest strengths. Don't underestimate the allure of the zen/meditative angle of the game. It's something to look forward to everyday because of it.
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#73I've never felt more disconnected from pop culture than now. The quantity of posts that just ASSUMED people knew what the hell Wordle was helped me realize that I do, indeed, live under a rock.
Do you not read HN that much? It's a worldwide phenomenon. Wordle-related content has been on HN practically everyday since mid January.
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#74I know that you're not copying the wordle vibe necessarily, but the animations seem too over the top to me. They're pushing into candy crush territory, and to me that a strong detractor. One of the thing I appreciate about wordle is that it isn't trying to be more than it is, and this feels too much like the free games that fill app stores and employs a bunch of dark patterns to hook your attention.
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#75I really like the execution on this. One piece of feedback is that the timer gave me anxiety and I closed it. I do puzzles to phase out from stress not to challenge myself in a time bound environment
The timer also really doesn't mesh well with the slow "letters falling down" animation between rounds. The UI is sending very mixed signals with "how quickly can you do this?" and "hold on, gotta wait here for a bit" at the same time.
I like the time pressure aspect, but I agree the animations should be snappier. Different TOKES for different FOLKS, I GUESS.
I’d also enjoy some form of global leaderboard of some sort (maybe a scatterplot comparing time and accuracy?), so I can assess how inferior/superior I am to others.
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#76Game Play: maybe you want it this way, but the animations are an impediment to gameplay. I like to type the words, and in a timed situation, typing quickly should be an asset to the player. The animations make good players worse, even on first guesses before you slow the animations. I like slowing the player after multiple bad guesses, but don't hamstring us from the start.
Word Lists: far too many plurals. Especially in the games you rate as more challenging, plurals render the game dull. There are plenty of interesting and difficult 5-letter patterns in English that make this type of game better.
Stars: this seems like an afterthought. I had done four or five of these puzzles before I realized what the mechanism for the stars was. Even when the summary screen showed that I finished with x number of stars, I really only cared about how quickly I was able to complete the puzzle. It is good that time is the overall measure in your game, but I found that I cared very little about stars in the end.
Overall a nice iteration on the Scrabble/Boggle/Wordle paradigm.
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#77Very well done. I almost love it, but the timed nature bothers me, as does the existence of multiple wrong board solves. With this game, I don't want to type in guesses without solving the whole board first, I like the logic puzzle, but if I solve the whole board first and it's wrong, that's too big a chunk of work to throw out for maybe one green or yellow square.
I could be in the wrong here, haven't played it much yet! Congrats on showing it off, very cool.
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#78Great execution, love the juicy animations!
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#79I had only two letters left, K and L. Words: BUL_Y and PEE_S. Each letter works fine in either spot, but only one way was correct. That kind of annoyed me because I guessed wrong the first time.
I don’t think there can be any easy way around issues like that in games like these. At least this game doesn’t penalize you for it
Well I did lose some time trying to figure out why two seemingly valid words didn’t work, only after a bit did I realize swapping the letters also worked and was the “correct” solution.
Re: Show HN: Three Magic Words
#80I enjoyed this but I think it could use some refinement.
I feel like you should either remove the timer, or accept any correct three words. Being punished for coming up with three words that fit, but aren't the three words you expected, is kind of frustrating.
To be honest I find the fact that it evaluates one word at a time to be pretty jarring. I want to be able to try letters in spots without the game yelling at me that they're wrong before I've committed to them. Instead I basically need to replicate the game board down below in the negative space.