Littlecosm Twitter game alpha release | Hacker News Reader

Littlecosm Twitter game alpha release

littlecosm.com

40 pointsbrokentone26 comments

Been watching this idea for a little while, now yongfook just opened up some alpha space.

I built a twitter game last year. It was a scrabble style word point game amongst friends. It got terrible reviews here and I abandoned it.

I still think there is a lot of opportunity to make twitter gaming a success.

It looks interesting but it would be nice to understand what I can actually do? Do I attack the other sprites on the screen or just do quests? I'm sort of lost in the interface right now.

that is kind of the idea right now.

alpha release. there will be early adopters who "get it". others won't. that sucks, but instructions / FAQs and whatnot will come later.

releasing is a feature :)

I've just worked out that the sprites represent recent tweets! Click the sprite to see the tweet. Tweets containing ":)" become white sprites.

This is a very nice project! After one, I have a couple of feedback:

- First I think that a faster progression at the beginning could create more excitement:

> by moving to level 2-3 faster (most games gives you lv2 after the 1st fight)

> maybe some of the 1st quest should shorter (like 2-3 minutes) I didn't got directly that I have to wait to achieve quests.

> create and encourage interaction with a @littlecosm account to gain xp (good for shy ppl with nobody to "talk" with)

Progression and reward is the drug of gamers and if you don't feed a new user quickly, he might desappear..

- What's about an "invite" system (like the dropbox one) if a new user come thru an existing one, you can reward the ref with xp/coins/cash

About the global understanding of the gameplay:

- The @littlecosm account could send a dm or @reply when your quest is over, at least for the 1st ones, it's frustrating for a player when you fail the very first time you play a game.

- More explainantions could help, maybe a small tutorial to start can be nice (lots of "what should I do" on twitter feedback, desho?)

That's my 2cents :), good work anyway :) I love that lil' world you created here!

that really is excellent feedback - thank you very much :)

pacing is super important and you're right, I need to make sure I reward those first few steps quite quickly.

Alpha full :(

By the way, the intro screen is awesome and beautiful, it reminds me of "Ico" AND "Another World" ("Out of this World" for you Americans).

added more spaces now!

I'm really looking forward to where this will go. I can't wait for the FAQs just because I don't really know what to do with the items that I've collected so far. Is there a possible way to navigate through my followers' timeline other than what has been tweeted in that "5 minute update"? And are you going to add the @ reply feature where a drop menu will show?

I would also appreciate if there was even a shortest FAQ somewhere, so I can at least know what to expect before I sign in.

I'll be writing a FAQ on my blog tonight.

(I'm the creator)

Another good way to do a tutorial is with mouseovers. A little info about each thing in the game would go a long way.

Littlecosm FAQ

http://yongfook.com/littlecosm-faq

I feel generally dazed and confused. Have played many a MMORPG in my time but this one is ... it's a bit more confusing than even Ultima Online.

Which is to say, bravo, you've finally made a MMORPG for power players! Kudos for that.

Now, the thing that confuses me the most is that, I start a quest and by doing absolutely nothing, the percentage of its completeness goes up ...

Another thing that baffles me is that, ok I can tweet. But it doesn't seem to do anything more than act as a farming mechanism for my stats and a virality factor for you ... I dislike farming with a passion.

edit: and there are other players in the game who seem to be people I follow on twitter ... but I'm not sure they're actually in the game or just randomly on twitter. Therefore I can't tell if I should interact with them or not ... or what that would even entail from a game point of view.

farming mechanism for your stats? please explain.

I'm just a dude who made a game - there's no evil corporation behind this...

Well next to my stats it says "Tweet to make your stats go up"

So does this mean that if I just start spamming like crazy my stats will go up like crazy? That feels like the general farming motto behind MMORPG's.

As in, "kill 5000 wolves and gain a level! yay!"

(don't worry, I'm not calling you evil, just trying to figure it all out, I generally like the idea)

I don't think this is really a power players type of game. I find myself wanting to be sometimes, because that's what I am used to. I find myself letting go of that mentality the more I play.

So does this mean that if I just start spamming like crazy my stats will go up like crazy?

Well sure, but that's up to you. It's only spam if you make it spam.

FYI the game does not append any hashtags or anything like that. Your tweet is exactly what you type. There's no viral benefit received by the game just by tweeting normally from the game.

Sorry the Littlecosm Alpha is now full.... :(

just added a few more spaces for you :)

What's the point of the game? Spamming twitter with random messages??? That'd be a rather idiotic thing.

Does it apply some language processing related to the quests at hand?

wow. I am quite blown away by unwarranted cynicism like this :/

Littlecosm is a twitter client in that, if you want to, you can tweet from it. Users only tweet from Littlecosm if they type in text and hit a "tweet" button, in exactly the same way they use any other client.

The game encourages you to tweet about it from time to time when you achieve something new in the game (of course, and so does every blog post and new web2.0 app out there!) but you are entirely, 100% free to not do that.

I didn't want to inject criticism.

The question is, how do you "solve" quests? Everybody on here seems to assume that this is done by tweeting about it. It even says on the page that the quest will be solved quicker if you do so.

where on earth does it say that? that is 100% incorrect.

quests are simply solved by waiting and coming back to collect your prize. that's it. it is perhaps the most casual form of item awarding there is.

if you wanted to, you could collect every single item in the game without tweeting once.

If I'm gonna use it as a client, I'd want to have pages/notifications for mentions and direct messages. And the other figures' tweets could be real time updated, I'm sure you thought of that.

it's not meant to be a direct replacement of your existing client. more like something supplementary, or when you want to take a break from Tweetie for an hour :)

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