Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak
wordtrak.comHi 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!)
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.
Also - fun!
Great questions, thanks - there is a tutorial!
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.
My phone's browser picked a heckuva place for the line break in the second sentence:
Are you coding 3 clients: - Swift for iOS - Kotlin for Android - TypeScript/React/etc for web
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!
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.
As with anything word-gamey involving internet, you will probably have to trim down your dictionary. While I'm very glad my "sh@g" beat their "tw@t", the first probably shouldn't be allowed (although there are non-rude definitions) and the second definitely shouldn't have!
Still, a very fun game, well made.
I kept (some of) the profanity in, kind of on purpose...because it's hilarious! I did remove some extreme slurs though.
Looks really good, are you in the first photo? How old are you? Good luck for your future projects!
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!
406 browser not supported (opera mobile). Come on...
Same on old Chrome desktop (116)
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...
Oops - my son's face is large though! I'm not seeing it on my devices or Chrome/Safari...
I love this.
I'm also building a simple game using Claude, so this is quite inspirational. Keep going!