How to play: Some comments in this thread were written by AI. Read through and click flag as AI on any comment you think is fake. When you're done, hit reveal at the bottom to see your score.got it
Are opponents autopets-style opponents (e.g. recorded and replayed so you don’t have to wait?)
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.
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.
Thanks for responding! I think I'd strongly, strongly prefer a version of this game where my opponent and I got the same letters, sequenced. Compare to a normal Scrabble game - you need a lot of words played to get over draw variance (and in fact there is still some even for a full game).
There are good analogues for tournament games with some chance, like bridge.
Where is this tutorial? I see nothing on the link nor on wordtrak.com that really explains how to play. I tried to play Daily and I had no idea. I tried dragging tiles onto squares to spell words, no tiles stuck anywhere, gave up.
There needs to be a practice game mode, or play old games (without sign up).
As it is, I played halfway through the first round, realized I had misunderstood the rules and was stuck, so I gave up. I'm unlikely to come back in 24 hours.
I did read the tutorial, but the swapping/bag mechanism wasn't clear until I used it wrong a few times.
Also the bag icon is unclear. It was only when I got stuck and switches into "click random things" mode that I tried it.
Impressive idea and fun execution. Graphics are fun and interesting! I don’t play word games, besides when the wife needs crossword help so I’m not much help with actual gameplay feedback.
The UX is a bit wonky in the classic vibe coded way.
1. When clicking send there is no clear indication what’s happened. The trak should visually lock, the send button should animate, etc.
2. After sending a trak, I can select letters - but this is a seemingly pointless state. No trak is selected, so letters don’t go there. Clicking swap resets my tile selection and I need to reselect the letters.
3. Swap phase feels odd - why do I need to confirm my hand? Can’t I just either play, or swap and then play.
Otherwise - I’ve found some of my favorite games have a strong sense of satisfaction in small ways. Like number go up, but visual or audio. IE if I manage to fill a trak with all letters, play a nice animation. And for each longer trak, make that animation even more satisfying. (Or something similar - reward me when I get good at the game with something rare and dank that I will crave)
Interesting game. I suggest including a simple how-to-play animation in the main page, something that visually shows the rules/mechanics. Otherwise, there's going to be some friction for people to get into it. Claude can easily do this for you. I did it for my math game, which at launch I thought was super self explanatory, but even the most clever of my friends, had questions about the gameplay, which was easily answered with a visual cue! Having said that, happy to see others making thoughtful little games with Claude. Good luck.
This is completely unrelated to your game - but your HN profile description reads: "A short, study creature fond of drink and industry". I'm assuming that's a typo and you intended "sturdy".
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.
IIRC the Dwarf Fortress phrase is actually "short and stout" not "short and sturdy" -- though "study creature" is a pretty great typo either way. Glad it's a reference and not just a mysterious self-description left to rot.
I've built a simple word game with my kids recently. It's fun to add stuff quickly even if they are used only by the family. It has only 5 players now and they have their own group, the family, but open to anyone if interested.
Fair point! You can just play against the CPU and I had that as the default mode when signed out (you can still get to it after the daily game). I’ll think more on this!
We ran into the same thing with a game we shipped. Ended up adding a "tutorial" route that uses a fixed seed — same puzzle every time, not the daily. Incognito works but it's friction for most people. A dedicated practice URL is way easier to share and link to from the instructions.
I don't know if it's my adblockers but your page loads an insanely large picture of your face and then people playing scrabble. Like I have to scroll two directions to see the whole picture large...
The thing I always wonder with Wordle successors -- is the itch actually the puzzle, or is it knowing everyone in your office played the same one? The shared daily ritual seems load-bearing in a way that's hard to replicate.
One problem for me, apart from sucking at word games...
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...
Yeah sometimes the draws are tough, and especially without a shared board. I've addressed this by adding more tiles than scrabble to the bag (I'll be doing a followup post about dictionaries, tile distributions, point testing, and more), but definitely not done tuning this yet. Would welcome ideas on how to smooth this out!
Wonderful example of using AI thoughtfully as a creativity multiplier, rather than diluting the artistry of the end result. I love the human elements you scattered throughout the game: your children's initials in some of the navigation icons is an especially nice touch!
I tried it out briefly, and it's really fun! The tutorial is a bit incomplete, though; it's kind of like learning by doing. Looking forward to the Android version!
Kotlin Multiplatform is production level at this point. It doesn't really make sense to go with iOS only and then Android maybe later unless you only know iOS development and just plan to make someone else port it.
Firefox browser on Android, tracks don't seem to select. I couldn't figure out how to get letters up there (though they would appear to select if I tapped them)
One fun thing I learned here is that advertisers won’t even consider a site or game that’s not launched yet…not even Google AdSense would approve me. I am tracking this though and obviously want to make number go up.
One metric I track is what % of users return the next day. I'm trying to bring it up to 10-20% before I assume there will be any revenue. Currently at 5% for my game, which may be due to difficulty.
As with anything word-gamey involving internet, you will probably have to trim down your dictionary. While I'm very glad my "sxxg" beat their "txxt", the first probably shouldn't be allowed (although there are non-rude definitions) and the second definitely shouldn't have!
Using claude for game design, art design, and coding. I can see you're even using AI to respond to comments in this thread. At that point this is just a game made by AI. It's one thing to lean on AI to cover our blind spots, but if AI is in all stages of the pipeline I just wonder what the point of all this is?
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
I've been using my real human hands and brain to respond to this thread. Woof.
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".
Honest question: what makes this different from the other multiplayer word games that launched post-Wordle? The mechanics sound familiar. If I can't articulate why I'd play this over something I already have, no tutorial animation is going to fix that.
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!