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Hi HN! Looking for feedback on this 1v1 and daily word dueling game I've built over the last few months.
Play here: https://wordtrak.com/
Or on iOS here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordtrak/id6760442363 (Android version soon!)
Discussion (22 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Just thought this was kind of amusing given that you're obsessed with word games.
** Feedback for the game **
I highly recommend adjusting the color palette. Aside from the letters themselves, everything tends to blur together particularly the square tiles on the black background. When there was a bit of glare on my screen, I could barely see them at all.
On a more personal note, I don't think that dark-mode style palettes really fit most word-based games. If you look at games like Scrabble, bananagrams, etc. they remind me of the color scheme from the 1981 arcade game Centipede, borrowing from that same palette of lighter pastel tones.
I’m confused about a lot of things about the game; I guess most particularly the letter draws — do I and my opponents get the exact same sequence of letters when traded in? Do we draw from the same (replaceable? Non-replaceable?) bag?
When I went to sudden death I saw very different words — in my case, I drew a J — was that it, since my foe only used a word with a G, I was basically guaranteed a win. Was that poor word choice on his part, poor or no trading, or a different tile set the foe had?
I think it would be nice to see all the possible letters in the ‘bag’ when we’re looking at trading.
Finally, is there a time component? It would be nice to get some indications about the opponent - maybe showing where they are hovering / clicking, or a clock countdown.
Also - fun!
There's a "bag" just like Scrabble and you're both drawing tiles from it. You can see the bag too, definitely should be visible during swapping, great call.
CPU players have heuristics and different word difficulties they play - I want to do a new post on that soon.
There's no time component... we tried that initially but felt too rushed.
I started with a load of vowels in my hand, just two consonants. I found a 3 letter word OK, but got a consonant and vowel back. I traded two vowels and got two more back. Couldn't make a 4 letter word, game over. I suppose the difference in scrabble is that if I had passed, someone else may have put a consonant down that I could use...
Still, a very fun game, well made.
Did you really need to waste money and resources to make a simple word game? Are people really getting to be this lazy already? /rant
Maybe look at it this way: With a full time job and 3 kids at home, I was able to learn a ton about shipping apps with new tools available over the last few months on the side, and also have some fun with my family and friends. I struggle to call that "lazy" or a "waste".
I'm also building a simple game using Claude, so this is quite inspirational. Keep going!