wordtrak.com
Play here: https://wordtrak.com/
Or on iOS here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordtrak/id6760442363 (Android version soon!)
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!
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.
I think the first move is a forced swap, though from a gameplay design perspective I'm not sure why. It took me a while to figure this out; it should definitely be made more obvious (assuming it's intentional).
I punted on dragging tiles since it felt janky...considering revisiting though.
As it is, I played halfway through the first round, realized I had misunderstood the rules and was stuck, so I gave up. I'm unlikely to come back in 24 hours.
I did read the tutorial, but the swapping/bag mechanism wasn't clear until I used it wrong a few times.
Also the bag icon is unclear. It was only when I got stuck and switches into "click random things" mode that I tried it.
There are good analogues for tournament games with some chance, like bridge.
The UX is a bit wonky in the classic vibe coded way.
1. When clicking send there is no clear indication what’s happened. The trak should visually lock, the send button should animate, etc. 2. After sending a trak, I can select letters - but this is a seemingly pointless state. No trak is selected, so letters don’t go there. Clicking swap resets my tile selection and I need to reselect the letters. 3. Swap phase feels odd - why do I need to confirm my hand? Can’t I just either play, or swap and then play.
Otherwise - I’ve found some of my favorite games have a strong sense of satisfaction in small ways. Like number go up, but visual or audio. IE if I manage to fill a trak with all letters, play a nice animation. And for each longer trak, make that animation even more satisfying. (Or something similar - reward me when I get good at the game with something rare and dank that I will crave)
Just thought this was kind of amusing given that you're obsessed with word games.
** Feedback for the game **
I highly recommend adjusting the color palette. Aside from the letters themselves, everything tends to blur together particularly the square tiles on the black background. When there was a bit of glare on my screen, I could barely see them at all.
On a more personal note, I don't think that dark-mode style palettes really fit most word-based games. If you look at games like Scrabble, bananagrams, etc. they remind me of the color scheme from the 1981 arcade game Centipede, borrowing from that same palette of lighter pastel tones.
I personally just use incognito mode for this, but not everyone is that savvy.
My mom has been regularly beating me
at Scrabble since I could spell.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...
Can I ask what your return % is?
I'm also building a simple game using Claude, so this is quite inspirational. Keep going!
Still, a very fun game, well made.
Did you really need to waste money and resources to make a simple word game? Are people really getting to be this lazy already? /rant
Maybe look at it this way: With a full time job and 3 kids at home, I was able to learn a ton about shipping apps with new tools available over the last few months on the side, and also have some fun with my family and friends. I struggle to call that "lazy" or a "waste".