I wonder if it might be a nicer UX if you could choose for the Shift key to be needed to slide circles around rather than to move the selection. In my mind, conceptually, arrow keys are for moving the selection, and tessellating objects "requires more work" so I'd expect Shift to be needed for that - not vice-versa.
It was exactly the way you describe in the earlier prototype. But I changed it based on feedback. I guess there's no set of controls that can satisfy everyone. :)
I do think you develop muscle memory for it pretty quick. Additionally, you can also use mouse, which can be convenient based on your preference.
> In my mind, conceptually, arrow keys are for moving the selection, and tessellating objects "requires more work" so I'd expect Shift to be needed for that - not vice-versa.
Totally swapped in my mind too! I guess it's one of those "look up/down" thing in FPSs, you can learn the other way but it still does not feel as natural.
What's even more annoying is that the way this is currently implemented, I can't even use local overrides to change the behaviour since the site uses query strings for everything.
The most convenient way to play seems to be to use mouse for selection, keyboard for sliding. That would become pretty inconvenient if sliding required use of the shift key too.
Little off-topic, though, I love how Wordle kinda opened our eyes to the possibility of doing this kind of games in the web instead off a one-off native app. I recently made a word puzzle myself[1] which some of my friends enjoy playing and there's no way I would go through the soul-crushing cross-platorm native development ordeal for such a niche little app. But it can live in the web! (and pretty much for free thanks to Netlify). I'm now thinking of dusting and old Objective-C game that I wrote 10 years ago and never released, and rewrite it on web.
Idk, suddenly I feel excited about the web, again.
I very strongly dislike the user experience in Electron apps but I know the tradeoff for portability is worth it.
It's a good example that highlights the importance of both user experience and developer experience. It doesn't matter that the native implementation would be "better" if it's impractical to actually do.
For mobile apps small devs can't even go down the native road any more without the risk you'll be banished without recourse from the app store for "reasons"
You're 100% right. But I would say that Wordle's success is unprecedented for web games. But I think it's part of the viral nature of the color squares tweets tbh.
This game is kind of nice. A clever variation of 15-Colors[1]. Problem though is that "15 Puzzle" is a pretty challenging puzzle in itself. Adding complexity of Wordle, makes it very hard. I see some potential in concept but it has to be made a bit easier to tackle.
It's actually easier than 15-colors (I didn't knew the name since I grow up in Mexico, thanks!) because the letters repeat so it's harder to get yourself in unsolvable positions. But I observed that many people stop playing once they guess the words, seems like solving the puzzle is way harder than guessing the words.
I haven't actually tried it, but when I was getting into Flutter/Dart for a small Android project it seemed like (from what I saw online) it would be very simple to build a web version from the same code that generated the APK. Of course for more intricate apps this would likely not hold true.
Had quite a good time with Flutter even if it was just a week of tinkering.
When I was a kid, I loved a game called [James Bond Jr.](https://www.mobygames.com/game/nes/james-bond-jr/screenshots...) that had these little puzzles that were super fun to do. Some of them were hair-pulling difficult, too. I never saw a modern rendition of those puzzles, so I thought to create one.
Eight Colors is the result. The rules are simply, but puzzles do get challenging after few levels.
Oh no! I don't know how we got a hold of this game. Back then, most games were pirated bundles (literally, no Indian could afford to spend $40 on a game). Somehow this was on the entry in "7 in 1" Cassette.
I thought about a this game in the past, unfortunately it has a very simple to follow algorithm -- much simpler than that of a rubik's cube -- which does not make it that satisfying to play in my opinion.
1. Select arbitrary row and column. Use this row & column to arrange all other rows and columns.
2. Arrange the last row & column. This is always possible and should take <= 20 steps, left as an exercise to the reader :)
It wasn't my intention to hijack back button. I was merely pushing the links to the current level, so that it's easier to share the level you're playing. But it does seem there's a better way to do it. The URL itself can be changed without modifying the history[1]. I will push a fix soon for this.
After reading the comments, I thought back would be undo, but it doesn't seem to do that. It just triggers the game to "reload" to the exact same positions?
Nice game! As others have mentioned, it feels like a 2D rubix cube, which I never managed to finish. Feeling more comfortable with this version.
I'd love it if it could be installed on the homescreen on mobile, with proper icon, splash screen and opening in standalone mode (i.e. not in the browser). I also sometimes trigger text selection on the grid or buttons, would be good to prevent it with `user-select: none`.
Fun but I’m encountering bugs or unexpected behavior. Circles disappear for no reason and then become immovable and/or impact other rows/columns inexplicably. iOS Safari
This looks fun, but I want to walk you through what I did when I saw the page. I started clicking on circles thinking I could move them by clicking. I saw the key commands, but thought, "No, I'd rather use the mouse. I'm not one of these power users that uses the keyboard for everything." But I couldn't click and drag. I could only click to select and then nothing would happen. You should make it more clear that the user needs to use the keyboard for anything to happen. Either that or ignore the mouse so the user says to themself, "Oh, this only works with the keyboard." As it is now, it's just really really confusing to a new user who isn't obsessed with always using the keyboard.
great game. It's like 2D rubix cube, which for me at least is a great way to actually understand how to solve it, in little pieces, rather than struggling with the whole cube solution. I just never had the spatial intuition for the 3D game to enjoy working on it much.
It's a known bug. But haven't been able to identify the root cause. Probably some race condition. I will fix it, but you can refresh too, which should resume the game from the same position.
Yes, doesn't work on iPhone SE (1st gen) or any iPhone set at larger text size (which is a similar resolution). Unfortunately many websites are not testing for this screen resolution any longer.
This is very fun! However, on iPhone SE-sized screens, it’s not possible to see the entire target pattern, nor is it possible to scroll down so the browser chrome (Mobile Safari) gets in the way. I got the first level by guessing
Nice! Fun little game - very similar skill curve to slide puzzles, where at first it's a little mind bending to try to move things where you want without disrupting the rest - but once you get the hang of it, it becomes very simple. Solving row-by-row top to bottom, and then doing a quick muscle-memory swap of the bottom positions if needed means any combination can be solved trivially in <1 min.
This is very fun. I get tripped up where my "control" line is and often make mistakes because the "control" line is not moving with the direction. For example, a shift to the left leaves my mind assuming the y-control line would move left as well so I could make a subsequent down shift on that column.
Cool game! One thing I found a little jarring was the popup that appears when you complete a puzzle. I feel like when completing a puzzle it'd be nice to see the finished result, at least for a short amount of time, before seeing the popup. But well done!
Nice game! I'm not on mobile so I don't know how swipe actions work. Looks to me like it would be easy to program selecting the axis you want moved by selecting a piece in the same row/column and then swiping the direction you want it to go in.
After finding a pattern I can use to move colors around, I think, I finally developed an intuition about the movement in Rubik's cube. I've known about solution patterns, but it didn't click until now. Thanks, I'll have to test it!
The place where this game is played is the two-dimensional torus (exactly like in asteroids), since the vertical and horizontal limits are connected. I think it's a nice way to get intuitions about the torus!
Fun game! I may have found a potential bug, however.
When replaying a level, the timer doesn't seem to properly reset. It will initially display "00m 00s", but then pick up where the previous attempt left off.
I'm really interested in knowing if your used any frameworks or libraries for this game, and if that's the case, which ones? I'm on my phone now so I can't easily check your source.
I'm on an iPhone 7 and I can't scroll down to see the target configuration. Always good to develop against smaller form factors if you're releasing to a wide audience
Nice game! Consider using key codes instead of characters, right now to use WASD controls you have to switch language (to English or something else that uses latin alphabet I guess).
This is interesting. I was able to solve all the puzzles intuitively, but still have no idea how the game’s algebra works :), i.e. I couldn’t write a program to do it.
How do you do such smooth animations with HTML5? Are those CSS animations? I'm really bad at web dev and always wonder how some good webapps were done, good job!
I quickly solved 7 levels and then tried doing lvl 23 and have been stuck on it for 10 minutes, always ending up with 2 circles next to each other that I cannot swap.
I wonder if it might be a nicer UX if you could choose for the Shift key to be needed to slide circles around rather than to move the selection. In my mind, conceptually, arrow keys are for moving the selection, and tessellating objects "requires more work" so I'd expect Shift to be needed for that - not vice-versa.