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Thank HN: The puzzle game I posted here 6 weeks ago got licensed by The Atlantic

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Re: Thank HN: The puzzle game I posted here 6 weeks ago got licensed by The Atlantic

#72
post #2

I posted Bracket City to HN on February 24th and the game went live yesterday on The Atlantic (!) The game will stay free to play (and not require logging in). Also, I'm still making all the puzzles! HN provided the first real infusion of players that weren't my mom's friends. So thanks everyone. FWIW The Atlantic's team is amazing and got this live exactly 2 weeks from when we signed the deal. This happened quick an…

Congrats! Some feedback, if you're taking any:

- Without the tutorial, it's confusing that you're not supposed to click and you're supposed to start typing. I wonder if placing the text box at the top would make that more clear.

- Some of the clues are confusing due to inconsistent punctuation. For example:

  [to ___fish, to lure someone in using a fake internet persona] = cat
  [do this or cut bait] = fish
  [taking a pay one is a bummer] = cut
  [rocks when added to soda will NOT cause your stomach to explode] = pop
The first line uses a comma, the second line uses "or", the third and fourth lines don't have any punctuation at all, so the sentences make no sense.

Re: Thank HN: The puzzle game I posted here 6 weeks ago got licensed by The Atlantic

#74
Congrats — well deserved! I love the game and play it every day; it's actually the first thing I do in the morning. A big fan of Hard mode! My best friend has also started playing it and we share the results with each other.

Just one feedback - on desktop browsers, I can see the list of answered clues below the textbox, but on the phone (Brave or Firefox on Android), I don't see that list. I am not sure if this is a feature or a bug, but it’s a feature I miss when playing on my phone. Seeing those answers gives that little “aha!” moment of satisfaction.

I also made a custom GPT - Bracket GPT [0] that helps in solving the clues when I am stuck. It doesn’t directly give the answers, but offers hints to help nudge you to the solution. It’s a fun companion when you're totally blanking.

[0] https://chatgpt.com/g/g-67e0f124cd408191943faadb3d70c6df-bra...

Re: Thank HN: The puzzle game I posted here 6 weeks ago got licensed by The Atlantic

#75
post #2

I posted Bracket City to HN on February 24th and the game went live yesterday on The Atlantic (!) The game will stay free to play (and not require logging in). Also, I'm still making all the puzzles! HN provided the first real infusion of players that weren't my mom's friends. So thanks everyone. FWIW The Atlantic's team is amazing and got this live exactly 2 weeks from when we signed the deal. This happened quick an…

That's awesome, congrats! I had a lot of fun solving today's puzzle. One minor bit of feedback/request: maybe I'm too spoiled by code editors, but it would be nice to have a visual aid for identifying matching brackets -- maybe colorizing matching pairs ("rainbow brackets"), and/or a click-to-highlight feature that highlights the entire contents of a pair of braces for you. I felt like I was spending a lot of time tr…

Agreed about the matching brackets, I had sent that suggestion to mayor@ a couple weeks ago, so maybe once this craziness settles down...

Re: Thank HN: The puzzle game I posted here 6 weeks ago got licensed by The Atlantic

#76
post #2

I posted Bracket City to HN on February 24th and the game went live yesterday on The Atlantic (!) The game will stay free to play (and not require logging in). Also, I'm still making all the puzzles! HN provided the first real infusion of players that weren't my mom's friends. So thanks everyone. FWIW The Atlantic's team is amazing and got this live exactly 2 weeks from when we signed the deal. This happened quick an…

Some feedback: On mobile, why is there a custom keyboard? I found it pretty annoying. I kept getting missed taps, and at least one wrong guess due to a typo I didn’t catch before. It doesn’t seem like the system keyboard’s spellchecking would interfere with the puzzle, so why not just use it? Is it an issue with layout consistency?

Otherwise I quite liked the puzzle.

Re: Thank HN: The puzzle game I posted here 6 weeks ago got licensed by The Atlantic

#77
post #76
post #2

I posted Bracket City to HN on February 24th and the game went live yesterday on The Atlantic (!) The game will stay free to play (and not require logging in). Also, I'm still making all the puzzles! HN provided the first real infusion of players that weren't my mom's friends. So thanks everyone. FWIW The Atlantic's team is amazing and got this live exactly 2 weeks from when we signed the deal. This happened quick an…

Some feedback: On mobile, why is there a custom keyboard? I found it pretty annoying. I kept getting missed taps, and at least one wrong guess due to a typo I didn’t catch before. It doesn’t seem like the system keyboard’s spellchecking would interfere with the puzzle, so why not just use it? Is it an issue with layout consistency? Otherwise I quite liked the puzzle.

Not having a 'space' button was helpful for me in getting going without the tutorial.

Re: Thank HN: The puzzle game I posted here 6 weeks ago got licensed by The Atlantic

#79
post #76
post #2

I posted Bracket City to HN on February 24th and the game went live yesterday on The Atlantic (!) The game will stay free to play (and not require logging in). Also, I'm still making all the puzzles! HN provided the first real infusion of players that weren't my mom's friends. So thanks everyone. FWIW The Atlantic's team is amazing and got this live exactly 2 weeks from when we signed the deal. This happened quick an…

Some feedback: On mobile, why is there a custom keyboard? I found it pretty annoying. I kept getting missed taps, and at least one wrong guess due to a typo I didn’t catch before. It doesn’t seem like the system keyboard’s spellchecking would interfere with the puzzle, so why not just use it? Is it an issue with layout consistency? Otherwise I quite liked the puzzle.

I also find the keyboard so terrible!

Re: Thank HN: The puzzle game I posted here 6 weeks ago got licensed by The Atlantic

#80
This is awesome, congrats!

While I spend quite a bit of time here on HN, I missed the original post but started playing daily after Paris Martineau mentioned it on the Intelligent Machines (formerly This Week in Google) podcast.

I’ve been wondering how long it’d take to get picked up by some publication. It’s just too good.

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