That's not the case here; any time you attack, there are two possible end states for the board. It's often not immediately obvious which of the two you'll end up in, but the outcome is deterministic and the process to determine the outcome is mechanical. The optimal way to play the game is to just manually do all these mechanical dictionary lookups and rule checks. That's tedious, not fun.
Having a battle preview (and word highlighting as suggested elsewhere) wouldn't actually remove any of the actual skill involved in memorizing a word list, reading upside down, or being able to visualize the outcomes. Having that knowledge is a prerequisite for building a good board. All that these better visualizations achieve is allow people to build that knowledge and those skills organically while playing the game.
And "playing the game" is a key part there. In the current state the game is so unergonomic that I predict 99.9% of the players bounce before winning a single game on the easiest difficulty, and never return. Chess can afford to be harsh and unforgiving because it's got hundreds of years of momentum behind it, and a history of being played on a board without any digital quality of life features. New games don't have that benefit.
It's probably more instructive to look at other word games. What happens in Scrabble if you use an invalid word? You forfeit a turn. Worldle? Nothing. In this game you'll lose a dozen rounds worth of board development.
- Opening the dictionary lookup requires two clicks, and then a third to focus the text entry. It needs a hotkey, and must focus the text entry no matter how it was opened.
- I'd expect to be able to dismiss the dictionary lookup page with Esc, but it requires yet one click.
- The dictionary lookup covers up parts of the board, and makes the visible parts hard to read. This makes looking up multiple words in one go pretty inconvenient.
Agree on all front re: the dictionary ergonomics. We'll look at smoothing that out (mobile is currently the blocker there, but everything is solvable :)
Re: visualizations, you make great points. Definitely something for us to mull over, and I do think some amount of this will make it into the game (at least behind an option, which defaults to on).
Thanks again!
I'm not sure what you mean by this. What are the two possible end states? You mean, depending on whether the tile you placed results in a valid or invalid word? I guess I think a limited more form of the suggestion, just indicating whether the new words are valid, would be ok.
> The optimal way to play the game is to just manually do all these mechanical dictionary lookups and rule checks.
I don't think so? The optimal way to play has to do with planning ahead based on the current board and your hand and the probability that you'll draw different letters. Understanding how attacks are going to resolve isn't one of the hard parts; I'm sorry for the chess analogies, but (assuming you know whether your resulting words are valid) it is just akin to counting how many attackers and defenders a square will have after you put a piece there, to determine if you're blundering it for free or losing a trade.
> It's probably more instructive to look at other word games.
I'm not so sure, because those games don't have as much interactivity between the sides (or any sides at all). I think the better analogy might be games that have a "battle resolution" step. This game's resolution step is a bit more complex than games like Risk, but far less complex than games like MtG. But in all of those games, part of reaching the right answer to the question of "is it a good idea to attack?" involves having a good understanding of what will happen if you do, and asking a computer for that answer is lame, IMO.
> New games don't have that benefit.
This seems like an argument for new games to cater to a least common denominator. That's right if the goal is to get bought by the NYT, but I think it's a bummer for labors of love.
But it's not just because you played an invalid word thinking it valid, which is what you're suggesting could be fixed. It could also be because something the opponent played that looks like gibberish is actually valid, because you're misunderstanding which words are contributing to a battle, or because you've misunderstood some part of the battle rules entirely.
Every single new player is going to be making all of those mistakes, and not just once. Each time that happens, the game in its current form is basically slapping them in the face because of how big the impact of mispredicting the outcome is. Now, most people don't like being hit in the face and will try to avoid it. By insisting that overcoming a bad UI is just another skill, you're pretty much ensuring that most players are driven away before they can be bothered to overcome the UI.
> The optimal way to play has to do with planning ahead based on the current board and your hand and the probability that you'll draw different letters
Yes, that's what the game would be about ideally. But that's not what the game is right now. In the current state, what matters the most is not making blunders. You know, the part that you earlier claimed just in the previous message was particularly fun and would be destroyed if the UI was fixed. And there is no actual skill involved in avoiding these blunders. It's just mechanical checking of words and the application of the somewhat unintuitive battle rules.
Why are you so insistent on making the game be about rote dictionary checks rather than about the strategy of building a good board?
> The optimal way to play has to do with planning ahead based on the current board and your hand and the probability that you'll draw different letters.
Even of a labor of love, I'd imagine the goal is to build an active player base. I believe that the game in its current state will not be able to do that, and it's entirely due to bad ergonomics and onboarding. Those should not be a line in the sand! The problems seem entirely fixable without compromising the core design of the game in any way.
I mean, I could be wrong. But the good news is that the only person whose opinion actually matters (the OP) should be in a position to evaluate this feedback now. It's a day since the Show HN post, and based on the score I'm guessing that about 10k-20k unique players hit the site as a result. Since the game has a server component, the author should have stats on their progression.
How many players finished a game? How many came back the next day for another daily "puzzle"? I'm betting it's a really low percentage for both. If that's the case, then the feedback in this Show HN (not just mine) is pretty clear on what to fix. While if the players aren't actually bouncing off the game, the feedback can probably be ignored :)
Yup, I like a good puzzle game but the interface is limiting and (despite reading the tutorial numerous times) the battle results aren't intuitive. I'd describe my reaction as "immediate disinterest".
