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Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?
251–260 of 273 posts
Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?
#252Product 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…
Reading comments about a puzzle game coming from a "product manager ex. game designer with a number of puzzle/word game in operation" is one of the main reasons why I come to HN.
Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?
#253Didn’t see that there was a theme at first, and I think after trying some of the other dates having that theme makes it too easy
Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?
#254[dead]
Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?
#255I got the letters "AACNT" and even cheated online. The only word online dictionaries could make was "TACAN" and it wasn't accepted.
I got stuck on Catan for a while too, as I assumed it was like most games and didn't use names.
At some point I just moved on, and solved the next word, Chess, in like 2 seconds. The results claimed I spent a whole pile of time on Chess, since it has no idea which result I'm thinking of solving (though all the wrong guesses for Catan should have been a clue that the time should have gone towards Catan.)
I'm not sure the per-word time values are useful if they can't be trusted to be accurate.
Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
I don't think that commenter is irritated-- they're making gameplay comments just as you are, comments that you too are free to ignore.
Fair enough, I somehow imagined a wrong tone of voice in their message, shouldn’t have done that.
Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?
#257Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?
#258Product 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…
"a timer (urgency) is usually not a very good idea for thinky games" 100% agree. I hate the timer on the NY Times mini puzzle. I like these types of simple games for unwinding, and a timer makes it more stressful.
They do give the option in the settings for this reason but I think that's the best part about the mini specifically, it enables the daily leaderboards to work even for folks who's friend group doesn't sit down and do full Saturday level crosswords regularly. I think the midis/larges are a better balance if you're just looking for relaxing but short solo play and there I wouldn't really mind if the timer was off by default (or not, there is less competition at that point).
Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?
#259This is fun! I like the timing challenge but for many people this is a turnoff (there's a great interview with Zach Gage^ where he discusses research - some people are unable to critically think / learn new things while under pressure)
So giving a sandbox where there is no pressure will probably be more fun for a large subset of players
My only real complaint: please include a puzzle version number in the auto copied share link so that if I solve yesterday's you know that's different from you solving today's
Incidentally you could probably let people try historic puzzles from the link if you wanted (compete on that one vs play today's), that would be a nice wordle feature
^ I think the humans make games podcast
Re: Show HN: I built a word game. My mom thinks it's great. What do you think?
#260I like the idea but there were several examples where I found a word but it was not the word the game wanted, and I was told "invalid word". Examples: I found "STONE" but the correct word was "NOTES", or "SPILL" vs "PILLS" etc. Extremely frustrating!