51–60 of 245 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard "canyon of doom".
I like it. I wonder if you could calculate how evil a solution would be in that regard, i.e. how likely you are to end up in a canyon. Maybe you could count how many substrings also occur in other valid words or something.
Absolutely - when they choose ridiculous words like "PATCH". WATCH HATCH BATCH CATCH LATCH MATCH There, I made 6 near-perfect guesses that would have cost me the game if I started with any one of them. This is so infuriating. I've lost I think 3 times already because of this type of word choice. Note : This is only relevant if you play on the hard-mode, which enforces you re-use guessed letters that have already been…
Usually I can solve a Wordle in a few minutes, but sometimes it takes a really long time, like 20 minutes if I don't give up. Two days ago I started playing during the last few minutes of the NBA game and didn't get the right answer until after the game was over. It took me 20 minutes and in the process I entered a word I didn't know about but that was in the dictionary. The correct word was a word I knew about but t…
I thought I would share some background about the game, some of the iterations I went through, and some of the future features I would like to add.
Background: Like many others, I have been playing Wordle daily. Recently, my Wordle win streak hit 99. I was admittedly very careful with my guesses on Day 100, not wanting to ruin my streak. Then I began to wonder…even if I wanted to lose intentionally, could I do it? Obviously, I could make intentionally bad guesses, but that would take the fun out of it. So I decided to build Don’t Wordle.
Iterations I have gone through:
The first version of the game was simpler and much worse IMO. I did not display the “Valid Words Remaining” at the top, and there was no concept of “Undos". Initially, I actually displayed the Wordle word at the top throughout the entire game! To be honest, that doesn’t change the difficulty of the game that much. However, given that the spirit of the game is not to guess the Wordle word, it seemed like the right decision to hide it.
I created the “Valid Words Remaining” feature when I realized how challenging the game was. I kept getting stuck and wondering whether there were even any words left besides to Wordle word. When I saw how fast the count shrinks, I felt the game was a lot more interesting.
I then added the concept of “Undos” when I realized the game was still too challenging. It’s particulary lame if you’re playing the game for the first time and you get eliminated after just 1 or 2 guesses.
Current Tech Stack:
-Route53 + Cloudfront + S3 + Create React App
Unexpected challenges:
1. The animations. I obviously copied all the concepts from the original Wordle, but I failed to appreciate the complexity.
2. The nuances of the repeat letter words.
3. What makes a Wordle square yellow? The answer is not so simple
4. Trying to get www.dontwordle.com and dontwordle.com to take you to the same URL (either www.dontwordle.com or dontwordle.com) and still support TLS and only use the tech I mentioned above. I actually still don’t have it working perfectly. I know of a solution, but it’s overly complicated
Features I would like to still add:
1. I have heard from multiple people that it’s annoying how you could get the game in an unwinnable state without realizing it. For example, maybe 20 valid words remain, but there is no valid sequence of words remaining to finish the puzzle. While the “Valid Words Remaining” feature is nice, it would also be cool to have a “Valid Solutions Remaining” feature
2. I would like to build a brute force solver that you can watch attempt to play the game in real-time. I have built something similar for a crossword puzzle and really enjoyed watching the computer try to fill the grid. I think it would be cool to do that same thing with this game.
Question I don’t yet know the answer to:
Do any words exist that would not have a single valid solution in this game?
The essence of any wildly popular single-player game = hard to win quickly + very hard to lose.
Sort of. You could argue that Super Mario Bros. is 99.9% losing for most people. But within those losses are little personal victories, like getting past the first Goomba.
I hate games that try to remove all loss, assuming people can't handle it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah! That reminds me of something a game dev once taught me about single player games. (paraphrasing) "Almost all AAA titles are impossible _not_ to finish in a reasonable time. The entire challenge of balancing a single player game is to hide all the ways the game holds your hand, while making the player feel responsible for all the times you win."
Um.. elden ring?
The essence of any wildly popular single-player game = hard to win quickly + very hard to lose.
> very hard to lose Sort of. You could argue that Super Mario Bros. is 99.9% losing for most people. But within those losses are little personal victories, like getting past the first Goomba. I hate games that try to remove all loss, assuming people can't handle it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah! That reminds me of something a game dev once taught me about single player games. (paraphrasing) "Almost all AAA titles are impossible _not_ to finish in a reasonable time. The entire challenge of balancing a single player game is to hide all the ways the game holds your hand, while making the player feel responsible for all the times you win."
Um.. elden ring?
Fun game but some very terrible UX decisions that seem spiteful at times.