Hi all,
So I made over the last month a word forming game with a Constellation Theme and I would really appreciate your input.
You connect the letters given to form words and in the end you get a constellation map with them, which you can save (it will open in a new tab).
It was a bit tricky and needed alot of javascript to form arrays with the word list and their respective definitions, especially since I wanted them to be in the public domain.
I hope you like it and tell me your opinion here, or in the game comments.
Super cool, good job.
I think I wouldn’t have bothered with a keyboard for the wildcard, just checked if any letter triggered a match from the word list (if that is technically possible, of course).
I actually had a feature in a previous version where since the word list is alphabetical in a javascript array, I had the javascript search the first word that matched the letters and then show the next 5 (as guides)… But it was a bit confusing at times so I ditched it… Plus the whole wildcard idea came from the blank scrabble tiles, I found it more thematic…
Very nice. Do you have it so that there has to be a certain percentage of letters that are vowels? For me, there wasn’t really enough vowels or ‘helper’ consonants - consonants that combine well with others, such as L and R. I have a suggestion. If the player makes a five letter word then they get an extra blank token. When there’s a whole bunch of adjacent letters that can’t be used together it would provide a nice incentive to work one’s way through it by making five letter words where one can to create opportunities in other parts of the board.
In the random game I dragged the blank to a letter to change it but then couldn’t go on with the game. I couldn’t select any letters after that to make a word. I tried the x and tick up top where the display box saying blank token is but still nothing happened. The letter changed to the one I selected though. Am I missing something?
The 5 word idea is actually pretty good and I will work on it today… Do you think it should be when 5 letters without the blank token are used or 5 letters including it??
About the token, when you selected a letter on the keyboard, did you press the “Enter” button on the lower right of the keyboard??
[quote=“Bubble, post:4, topic:40057, full:true”]
I have a suggestion. If the player makes a five letter word then they get an extra blank token. When there’s a whole bunch of adjacent letters that can’t be used together it would provide a nice incentive to work one’s way through it by making five letter words where one can to create opportunities in other parts of the board.[/quote]
And now it is implemented… Thanks for the suggestion…
Very very good, it’s a game changer and if anyone reading this tried it before, I recommend playing again.
Tthe bonus blank works great and yes you made the right decision to allow five letter words with a blank to receive the bonus. 1. It just makes strategising more interesting. And 2. there might not be any five letter word opportunities without using a blank.
And now it’s possible to get close to using all the letters.
That was it, didn’t notice it. Especially as my small laptop screen doesn’t show the lower keyboard row without scrolling. Maybe it’s just me but I think the button could be more ‘enter-y’ looking.
I have two more suggestions. The first one might be beyond what you want to do and completely understandable. If I’m thinking about where and how to use my blanks, I can’t test that a potential word will be accepted until I use the blank. I was going to almost use all the letters on the board but my word wasn’t accepted. So if this is something you think would add to the game you could make it so that the player could type in a word to ‘test’ it.
My second suggestion is as well as showing the total score, there could be a percentage of letters used score. This would be especially useful at the end. For example, even with my failed word mentioned above I used all but three of the letters and I was very happy about this. So it would be nice to have a percentage score to compare to for future games.
PS
In your game description it says:
Scoring is calculated by adding the points of the chosen letters and multiplying them to the number of letters.
It sounds better if the ‘to’ is ‘by’: and multiplying them by the number of letters
I should give you credits for these… It does play alot better with the extra tokens…
For the other suggestions, the first would be hard to implement, but I’ll think about it… I could have a button that would show a panel where you could type a word and check if it exists… Do you happen to remember what word was not accepted? I could check it against the list…
For the second I was already thinking that, since with the extra tokens you can end up with unused tokens, you could get bonus points for any unused tokens you may have and add a bonus according to the percentage of letters used… The UI would be tricky, but I will work on it…
Also thanks for the correction… I can’t believe I didn’t see it…
PS
Wordle was why I thought of this game… My main project that I’m working on is a turn based tactical spaceship roguelite. The position of the letters is based on the galaxy generator that I had made for that game. You would start the game at the left star and choose your way towards the right, similar to the slay the spire map… So, after playing almost obsessively wordle for a few months, I thought I would take a few days break and make this word game… And a few months later I had made it…
I had posted about the galaxy map here along with the project file…
Haha, yes I sure do. But it’s one of those words that are what I call scrabble words. It’s not part of normal everyday English and I find it annoying actually when such words are included in game dictionaries. The word was qat. Haha, I feel stupid, but yes apparently it is a word. But whatever word source you’re using now, I’d say it’s a good one if it doesn’t include it, haha. But that’s just my point of view.
About a bonus for gaining tokens but not using them. Yes, well, but not too many bonus points maybe? I’m undecided on this actually. The purpose of the tokens is to make more moves, not to save them as though they’re valuable vs But then, why shouldn’t there be a reward for achieving a good score without them?
I just think that a lot of letters used with no tokens left should always be more rewarded than not many letters used with few or no tokens left.
And no, it does not exist in my word list… It does exist however in the 280k scrabble wordlist I had at first, but I couldn’t use it for copyright reasons and I ended up using a 78k word list with definitions in the public domain…
I was thinking something like 50 points per unused token and 100 points for every percentage above 90… That should make it clear that it is better to use them than not…
The choices made in the OPTIONS menu (Color Scheme, Music and FX Volume) are now stored and will remain on your next game…
There is a percentage meter of the stars Used so far…
When more than 90% of the stars are used, you get 100 bonus points for every %…
At the end scene you can now see except from the score and the date (or game ID on random games) the percentage of stars used and the number of Constellations…
In this update I have added a dictionary lookup button that will allow you to type any word to check if it exists in the game dictionary… The background will turn Red if the word does not exist and Green if it does.
Also added is keyboard support during the letter change and the dictionary lookup.
Edit:
As a new feature, I added the option to show possible words that match what you are typing during the lookup…
