Ripple, a puzzle game about 2nd and 3rd order effects | Hacker News Reader

Ripple, a puzzle game about 2nd and 3rd order effects

ripplegame.app

155 pointsmooreds41 comments

Idk the intended demographic but it felt too easy or even heavy-handed. Three of the four options in each round sound like "and everyone lived happily ever after." Only one sounds like something that would happen in real life and continue the story.

This is cool but it needs to be bingeable to really make it big. I don't think this works as a Wordle once a day kind of thing. I was going to send it to a non-tech friend who'd love it, but decided against it once I saw the 23 hour timer. She would've hated me.

Try this: https://vladimirtech-eng.github.io/ripple-mirror/

Is this a non-limited version? After finishing a ripple, it could really use a "Random" button that lets you easily continue with another ripple, just so people can directly keep going.

Yeah, just switch to level 1 in the level switcher! You should be able to go thru them all by just clicking next puzzle after that

For the 18th Amendment, we can probably mostly agree on what happened. But it only works because the wrong answers are very obviously wrong (and virtually impossible). But that forces you into answering along the path which is clearly not as wrong, even though it's full of vague sweeping generalizations. There were many small time bootleggers, for instance. I think it's a crummy idea to reduce history this way - who are you trying to teach a lesson, and why should someone trust that your interpretation of the chain of events is accurate?

You mean GPT’s, right?

The time delay is a dark pattern, the questions are too easy, and the login for leaderboard would makes sense if users could do longer question sequences with escalating difficulty. I would do this as a tree of possible consequences instead - let people share a red path most people would choose and a green path that should be chosen as the desirable outcome. See what shows up.

> I would do this as a tree of possible consequences instead

Games like Detroid:Become Human has a good UI for showing the decisions, and outcomes (as well as unexplored ones in grey).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=21627...

I would call this a history quiz, not a puzzle. The "ripples" are not deducible from the info given.

Disagree. I just tried it--yes, I knew the history but I would have predicted those results anyway.

This is really cool! It's interesting that you can "cheat" by knowing the historical situation in advance. But I guess there's no way around that - if the situations involved were hypothetical, it would be unsatisfying when you guessed "wrong". It'd be neat to see really obscure examples drawn from history.

Cool concept! However, the fact that it's on a timer and you can only try the next even in 1m is a killer feature (in a not-good way). Same for not being able to view the leaderboard

i get "next puzzle in 3.5 hours" WAT? it's interesting, but i'd like to play a dozen questions in my 5 minute break, not just one.

This kind of smells LLM, which is fine. But I do want to see the facts backed by citations.

Pivot this to be a history learning app, I find this kind of learning to be addictive.

While this could (today's instance was not particularly mind blowing) be interesting, I don't like the idea of calling a trivia based on historical facts a puzzle

i'm sold, but please add a historic or archive mode, i need more...

Came here to say the same. The game tastes as too little with just one question; when you get the gist of how it works, it's over.

I pulled out the data that I could see; strangely it seems to be the 16th question but the page shows "#736"

Data as JSON: https://gist.github.com/nicktimko/fb48810b448275a4d7817e2b65...

Or if you want to download it yourself (yay for Gemini giving me a Node one-liner to parse a JS object to get JSON. Beware it uses `eval`!!!)

    curl -sSL https://ripplegame.app/assets/index-B2aU9M_o.js | \
        grep -E -o -p "\[\{id:1\,.+\"}]}]" | \
        node -e "const vm=require('vm'); let b=''; process.stdin.on('data',d=>b+=d).on('end',()=> { try { const script=new vm.Script('('+b+')'); console.log(JSON.stringify(script.runInNewContext({}),null,2)) } catch(e) { console.error('Invalid JS') } })"

Try this: https://vladimirtech-eng.github.io/ripple-mirror/

perfect, thanks :) amusing to play a bootlegged version of a free game...

I wonder if this could be used to gauge someone's optimism/pessimism.

I wanted more and didn't want to wait so I asked Claude (Opus 4.5) to make me a game in this style with 40 new scenarios. https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/0bed2bde-9d0c-442f-a76a-f...

Cute, but you can do only one day at a time. I would have had to like it more to be motivated to bookmark it and come back tomorrow.

Too much speculation. Take the 18th amendment one. Maybe prohibition did have the desired effects, in addition to the undesirable side effects. The two are not mutually exclusive.

It's as if this can be known in advance. And that the most acceptable reason/justification is provided (terrorists, child abuse prevention) knowing the likely result at the end of the cascade (security cameras, restrictions, de-anonymised internet).

Why can I only play #736? What's up with games nowadays that only give you 1 puzzle per day? IIRC the original Wordle was like that. Is it designed to make you bookmark the URL and visit it every day? I doubt most people would do that.

What are the second and third order effects of the CIA capturing Maduro?

Increased security for "unapproved" leaders of a state. Allies will help out of fear instead of common goals. Resentment among allies. Appeasement until counter control is effective

Fasttracking WMD programs up to and including nuclear for country leaders who are feeling a bit too 'abductable' for comfort.

I’d see if you can find examples from outside the US or in lesser known fields—economics must have some great examples. Great idea and great UI!

I just played one (can iI play any of the past ones?)

But this should be mandatory game-theoretic education for politicians (if it really is what I think it is).

Firefox won't let me view it because it says the connection is insecure. Not sure what is happening.

It seems I know more about American history than I thought. Cool puzzle.

Does it only have one example? Really would like more.

I leave this comment whenever a new game with this "one game a day" model pops up:

You are not Wordle. You are never going to recreate the virality of of Wordle. The artificial restriction on gameplay does not help you because 99.999% of your users are going to play it and move on rather than bookmark your site, set a reminder and come back the next day. Instead let them play a bunch of games NOW and they may get hooked.

Try this: https://vladimirtech-eng.github.io/ripple-mirror/

Nice!

> Next puzzle in 4 hours

What is the point of this? I’m not going to return to a site with a cooldown timer after using it once.

Unusable on iphone SE, the UI is cropped on the bottom and cannot be scrolled.

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