Ask HN: Please review my DropZap web demo. It's written using GWT. | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Please review my DropZap web demo. It's written using GWT.

dropzap.appspot.com

68 pointsamichail46 comments

You absolutely need at least one carefully expository level to demonstrate the game mechanics. Play Wario's Woods for the NES, and you'll know what to do. Your textual description is awful, but I'm not sure how you could do it better -- so ditch it! Show, don't tell. Tell them just enough to inspire them to try it.

Graphics. You don't need 3D anything, you don't need to turn the blocks into animal species with a story. You just need it to feel like someone considered it more rather than doing what the tools made easy -- taking stuff out will go a long way.

You need sound effects, if not music.

The iPhone/iPod touch version has sound effects.

You might be able to get away with removing most of the explanation if you had a simple animation of the game play looping on the page. All I needed was to start the first level to understand how the game worked (having played drop 7)

I really think you might be on to something. It's just as much fun to play as any of the big hits in this genre I can think of - really is in the same class as Tetris, Bejeweled, etc.

Some random thoughts:

- I started reading the instructions, failed to visualize any of it, and said "screw it, I'll just start playing and pick it up as I go". The good news is the gameplay itself is very intuitive.

- appearances are SO important in the iPhone world. If it looks like it's starting to pick up momentum, absolutely get a good designer on board and give it an overhaul. I can easily see someone else take your gameplay, give it a lot of polish, and release an app that will leave yours in the dust - that would really suck.

edit: just bought the iPhone version. Well worth the $0.99.

Same here. Though I'd say the size of the blocks gave me a much better clue as to what's going on instead of the color. If there was something, like icons that "degrade" naturally, like...say from big birds to small birds...(that explode with lasers at the end), it'll probably help.

Amichail, I am very happy for you. You were able to make a new puzzle game with gameplay on the order of Tetris and that is a very rare achievement. There can't be more than 10 puzzle video games that have gameplay as compelling as Tetris or Bejeweled or even BreakThru and derivatives. BreakThru is called Big Money on Popcap. Dropzap's similarity to that definitely NP-complete game is what makes me think your game is also NP-complete.

I think the guy saying this is better than Tetris is being a little hyperbolic, but maybe it's just because I consider Tetris to be (by far) the greatest video game ever made.

I don't mean this to be in any way offensive, but I always kind of looked at you as the official mascot of the site. "I think 1 is the optimal number of amichails." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=925382 It now looks like you are going to find success.

Have you given any thoughts to the eventual design/theme? Robots? Dinosaurs? Demolition? Or keep it purely or mostly abstract? One incentive for a theme or improved design is that you can use that version 2.0 to justify a new round of reviews on the app review websites.

Now all we need is a social news site that uses DropZap scores to determine story order! :D I'd settle for a high score page where people get to link to their personal or business site.

For me, at first, the color and size had distinct significance. Instead of changing the size and color of the blocks, how about using one color and tuning down it's saturation, or transparency and keep the size the same. Or just change the size? Did you try this at first, was it too bland visually? Also, I thought it would be better too not have a row feed of blocks after every drop. Doing this would more clearly expose the mechanics. Presumably this wasn't feasible because trivial games could be played by stacking blocks in only one column. This expolit might be eschewed by introducing indestructible blocks, and may also allow arbitrary height of the board. I think the chain reaction effect is visually appealing, but takes away from game play. Past the second round of block removal, it's impossible (heh, well for this mortal) to definitively predict the consequences of a particular drop. Badda-bing-bang-bong and half the screen is cleared. When it doesn't work out so well the responsibility for failure can easily be ascribed to unfortunate randomness introduced by the row feed. It's a neat idea though, I hope it works out and that in 5 years I'm eating my words :]

...it's impossible (heh, well for this mortal) to definitively predict the consequences of a particular drop. Badda-bing-bang-bong and half the screen is cleared. When it doesn't work out so well the responsibility for failure can easily be ascribed to unfortunate randomness introduced by the row feed.

What do you mean by this? The chain reaction doesn't involve anything random.

The chain reaction involves the row feed, which I assume is randomly generated. But that's entirely a different point.

I'm saying that it is nearly impossible to predict what's going to happen given that a particular choice often causes a reaction which might involve many steps (9? 10+) of elimination, each changing the configuration of the blocks. I've built a block dropper, that's why I saw this. But if users like it, and it's selling ...

When you drop a piece, you will not get a new row inserted before the chain reaction (if any) completes. So a new row will not affect your ability to predict how the chain reaction will go.

But yes, chain reactions can be long. You can at least predict how a chain reaction will start out and guess about what might happen after that.

Do you think the page is confusing? How could it be improved?

The demo is limited to the first three levels of standard mode. Do you think I should take off the three level limit? Although you can play this in Safari on the iPhone/iPod touch, the animation is sluggish and buggy. Moreover, the native version has more features.

The explanation on the page talks about a "column segment" and a "square piece", but I couldn't figure out how they correspond to the elements in the game.

Maybe I should say "stack of squares" instead of "column segment".

I thought it is confusing when it says "column segment lands," because I thought a column would show up and land. But you mean when you form a column right?

When a square lands, it may have square(s) immediately above it.

Only the square at the bottom of this landing square stack shrinks other squares (if any).

I find the page confusing. Focus on the actual web-based game, and move information about the iPhone versions and such to a different page. Ideally there shouldn't be a scroll bar on the home page once you're done moving stuff to different more appropriate pages.

Just better design would solve this problem. Make more effective use of horizontal space.

Yes, I would make the online version the full game, I don't think the online version would cannibalize your iPhone sales. You could try and convert non-iPhone into paying $.99 for the web app after they lose the game. Not sure if iPhone rules probably don't allow for it, but it would be interesting if you could allow your paying web app users to gift someone the iPhone app.

I agree. I hit the level limit my third time playing, then left the page. Had I not been stopped by the level limit, I probably would have stayed up far too late tonight playing rather than coming back here to comment.

Putting the full game online would get people like me hooked, making it more likely for us to want to take it with us.

This is Javascript, which means you can play it in Safari on the iPhone/iPod touch. The animation is problematic in Safari on my 2nd generation iPod touch, but perhaps it's reasonable on the fastest iPhone.

If you really wanted to, you could just block the iphone/ipod user agent string.

Although that'd be more of a last resort thing.

Or only give iPhone Safari users 3 free levels

Yeah, that would work pretty well. There are no options I could find for switching the UA on the iPhone that are provided by Apple. There are a couple of apps that claim to do that but they cost money, don't have clear explanations of what they do, and don't have great reviews.

Could Google get upset with this approach?

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answe...

Hulu does this. You can't access Hulu from the PS3's browser anymore. REALLY annoying, because otherwise I could easily watch Hulu on the bigger screen.

" For instance, placing different text in JavaScript than in a noscript tag violates our webmaster guidelines because it displays different content for users (who see the JavaScript-based text) than for search engines (which see the noscript-based text)".

Doesn't Youtube do this? If you don't have Flash, something else is displayed.

It works well on my Droid, except selecting a column highlights the whole playing field for a second. I don't know if there's a way to disable that...

Better than Tetris. Much better. I think that sums all.

However I second the suggestions to make more clear what actions will led to the column and lateral block elimination. It take me a couple of plays to figure out.

Congratulations for your work.

I could not figure out what was happening in the first minute of playing it, so I closed the page. And I'm not too dumb, so I think about 70% of people will be the same.

You need to explain better how the game works.

Well, from what I understood it works like this:

You lose when the blocks get to the top of the playing field. You need to make points by making blocks disappear. To do this you have the piece at the top of your screen. Click where you want to drop it.

Now all blocks under and on the same row will shrink. When you shrink a red block, it will disappear.

When a red block disappears, the blocks above it fall, which will start a chain effect starting at the lowest one (just try, you'll understand what I mean).

Enjoy!

Seriously, you have an attention span of less than 1 minute? I AM dumb but I got it within a couple minutes of playing it. Give it a chance, it's pretty fun and addicting. I think about 78.123% of people are more like me. BTW, there's instructions at the bottom, but if you've only gave it one minute, then you might not have noticed.

Wow, that was really fun. The description doesn't accurately describe the behavior of the game though, or rather maybe they could be more clear. For instance:

When any square lands, it shrinks all squares below it and in the same row segment. -> actually, it only shrinks contiguous squares in the same row (of course, now that I re-read it, maybe that's what you meant by "row segment")

That being said, I played that game for 5-10 minutes before remembering that it was an "Ask HN" and that I should come back here and provide feedback ;-) Bookmarked!

What percentage of people would know what "contiguous" means?

I agree describing it in text might be a problem. I would generate a few pictures showing different ways the "blast lines" interact with the board. I wouldn't go through all the more interesting chain reactions (part of the fun is finding them). But I think it would make the game easier to understand for a first time player.

I think "contiguous" does a great job of making "it shrinks all squares below it and in the same row segment" more concise and understandable, even if just for the subset of people who understand what contiguous means. That being said, I wouldn't underestimate the intelligence of the average english speaker that much. Contiguous is a pretty common word.

But a good compromise would be a video or something demonstrating exactly what you mean.

My guess is: put the 9/10 from the iPhone App review near the top. Simplify the page and reduce the importance of most of the text - lots of colours demanding attention. Get it to 1 message and the game.

However I suspect the real answers will emerge from testing. Do a test on trial screen count and see which amount of screens increases your conversion. Test changing colours, text, positioning etc. Over time you'll know more than we could about what will work on that page.

Or just hire a designer.

For the l&f yup, but designers won't necessarily know anything about improving conversions, which testing will do for you.

Hey, I love it! Brilliant game! It's simple but there's still something to figure out because you have to anticipate the cascading effects of squares getting eliminated.

The explanation isn't good, but playing it reveals how it works anyway.

Awesome. I hit the level cap at least 3 times before coming back here. Please make the web version unlimited, I would like to play more and don't want to drag out my phone while I'm at my computer.

first of all the game is great and very addictive and has more depth than tetris and bejeweled and what not.

problems with the page tho: 1) way too many different fonts and colors to the texts. confusing to process, i didn't know where to place my eyes for quite a while

2) descriptions and reviews are too verbose. like instead of all the reviews, all u need is like a one liner like "way better than tetris and bejeweled" that conveys what it is as opposed to like 3 paragraphs.

I have no idea how the block elimination logic works once they all start falling, but I don't care. I just want to play over and over. You will soon be earning my 99 cents. Kudos.

Lots of fun, and it played very smoothly. Obviously the graphics could use a look, but you know that.

Hey, if anyone's bored you could try and prove this game to be NP-Complete...

as everyone else is saying - this is pretty awesome, but you need to have some kind of auto mode running or something that shows people what it does.

Nice game. Aussie itunes store pretty please...

pros:

- really fresh and interesting - lots of neat surprises

cons:

- not at all clear why what i am doing is causing these cascading effects, but the after-effects are awesome

really really cool game, and really really cool math behind hit. i'm really impressed with this.

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