Seriously though reminds me of the game "Countdown" in the series IT Crowd where they compete to find the longest word in a random assortment of vowels and consonants.
This seems like a fun way to practice English vocabulary. One thing confused me, though — I thought the goal was to make the longest word using all of the given letters, but it looks like you can also compete with words that don’t use every letter. Is that intentional?
johnchinjew 11 minutes ago [-]
Yes, it's intentional to allow words that don't use all the letters. It can be very tricky to think of a panagram every time (word that has all 7 letters used at least once). Hence, we don't require every submission to be a panagram. I'll work on making the instructions clearer!
There is a bit of an interesting related sharp edge here. Sometimes the longest word for a given set of letters actually does NOT use all the letters! I've thought of a number of approaches to address this tension, but, opted to keep scoring dead simple in the end. I may experiment in the future on this topic though.
johnchinjew 4 minutes ago [-]
I'd also like to expand it to work with other alphabetic languages too.
johnchinjew 2 hours ago [-]
Sorry folks, something broke! Looking into it and will post here with updates.
UPDATE #2: Seeing full recovery now (Aug 9, 10 PM PST).
This is a lot of fun! I'm pleased that I was able to defeat "hitler1488", but you may want to add some content filtering for the name choosing step.
johnchinjew 8 hours ago [-]
Good idea. And thanks for checking it out!
scronkfinkle 4 hours ago [-]
Fun game. Would be nice if there was a single player mode that simply prints the letters and at the end shows the longest word that was missed. That way you can play it offline and place a phone in the center of the table and people can play around it with pen and paper or by just thinking of the word and everyone announces at the end.
johnchinjew 6 minutes ago [-]
Thanks for checking it out! A single-player/offline mode does sound fun too. I do think I will end up adding support for a number of variations and modes.
SamBam 9 hours ago [-]
Nice!
Needs a chat space to say "gg" at the end. It could even be just a button that does just that, if you're worried about unmoderated chat. Competitive games feel unfinished without it!
I was in second place for the first three rounds and then swept to the front on the last round.
brikym 5 hours ago [-]
OP will probably want to replay events to make it seem real time when there aren't enough people to pair with. So a real time chat might not work.
johnchinjew 8 hours ago [-]
Adding chat is a good idea, thanks for the input. Thanks for checking it out!
doublerabbit 8 hours ago [-]
As well recommend but make it limited chat.
A way to salute and say well done does make the experience more fun.
decimalenough 7 hours ago [-]
Idea: it would be more interesting/competitive if you could immediately see others' submissions, and if those words were then "taken" and can't be reused.
Currently you're just kind of twiddling your thumbs after you submit and run out of ideas.
It was also not immediately obvious to me that you can submit multiple words, so I was wasting time entering and deleting attempts before finally submitting the best one.
Finally, instead of fixed timers between rounds, you might want to have a "Ready!" or "Go!" button.
johnchinjew 17 minutes ago [-]
Really great points, thanks for commenting.
One nuance: if you show others' submissions right away, the game turns into a "race" where speed matters a lot more. That could be fun too (a different game mode?). I might think about showing something like "Opponent X found A _ _ _ _" or "Opponent X found a 5 letter word".
Funtownarcade 4 hours ago [-]
Nice. I didn't know you could reuse the same letter! How are you handling the multiplayer framework?
johnchinjew 47 minutes ago [-]
I'm using Phoenix LiveView + PubSub to keep everyone's browser in sync.
OisinMoran 5 hours ago [-]
Super fun, thanks for sharing! Might be handy to explain the rules up top (can't seem to see them):
- Proper nouns allowed
- Can reuse letters
- Longest word possible might not use all the letters
pbh101 3 hours ago [-]
I like it!
UX feedback: I don’t understand when a round ends. Surprised by it each time.
brikym 5 hours ago [-]
Awesome game. This round was quite funny since the other person got an antonym.
This is great! No need to require a button click in between rounds IMO. Just start the timer.
trapture 8 hours ago [-]
A word got denied with the error "Word was already used". I had in fact not used it already, neither had any of the others. That caused me to lose the game, very unsatisfying.
(nice game otherwise)
johnchinjew 8 hours ago [-]
I think I know what went wrong. Right now, even unscored words are not allowed to be reused. Will post a quick fix. Thanks for the precise bug report!
zatkin 8 hours ago [-]
I'm the horrible kind of person to go off and use an AI-assisted cheat that can be pasted into the console. Very fun game, nonetheless!
8 hours ago [-]
doublerabbit 8 hours ago [-]
Gentle and fun. Reminds me of isketch back in the days of flash.
I look forward to playing this with my mother.
antonbezr 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 05:57:29 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Seriously though reminds me of the game "Countdown" in the series IT Crowd where they compete to find the longest word in a random assortment of vowels and consonants.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9ixvD0_CmM
There is a bit of an interesting related sharp edge here. Sometimes the longest word for a given set of letters actually does NOT use all the letters! I've thought of a number of approaches to address this tension, but, opted to keep scoring dead simple in the end. I may experiment in the future on this topic though.
UPDATE #2: Seeing full recovery now (Aug 9, 10 PM PST).
UPDATE #1: Looks like Railway is having problems - https://status.railway.com/incident/RL8FRJE6
Needs a chat space to say "gg" at the end. It could even be just a button that does just that, if you're worried about unmoderated chat. Competitive games feel unfinished without it!
I was in second place for the first three rounds and then swept to the front on the last round.
A way to salute and say well done does make the experience more fun.
Currently you're just kind of twiddling your thumbs after you submit and run out of ideas.
It was also not immediately obvious to me that you can submit multiple words, so I was wasting time entering and deleting attempts before finally submitting the best one.
Finally, instead of fixed timers between rounds, you might want to have a "Ready!" or "Go!" button.
One nuance: if you show others' submissions right away, the game turns into a "race" where speed matters a lot more. That could be fun too (a different game mode?). I might think about showing something like "Opponent X found A _ _ _ _" or "Opponent X found a 5 letter word".
- Proper nouns allowed
- Can reuse letters
- Longest word possible might not use all the letters
UX feedback: I don’t understand when a round ends. Surprised by it each time.
Me asexually +18 38 lessee +12 31 Noah slays +10 30
I look forward to playing this with my mother.