gobble game
introducing "Gobble", a 6x6 Boggle-style game! (edit: now 5x5 but guaranteed to have at least 35 5+letter words)
Feedback/bug reports welcome. Game resets each day at midnight ET (NY/Toronto).
gemini://gemini.patatas.ca/gobble
May 02 · 5 days ago · 👍 stack, Half_Elf_Monk
16 Comments ↓
CGI error now. Earlier I saw a board but didn't get a chance to play; now it's busted.
🥜 smallpatatas [OP] · May 02 at 19:29:
thanks! I had made a change but clearly i didn't properly test it. Reverted, hopefully working again. Sorry about that!
195? Oh my god! How long did it take you?
🥜 smallpatatas [OP] · May 02 at 19:45:
@stack looks like you're back in, awesome :)
The answer to your question: too long, honestly. I'm already thinking I should do what you were just making minor adjusments to w/ spellbinding, some sort of min/max available points when generating the daily games. Today's board has a crapton of words in it, and some boards during my early testing had a frustratingly low number. And/or maybe it should be 5+ letters instead of 4+, curious what people think
Yes, managing player experience is a big part of it
I had to manually curate games the first few months, until I got the limits and the dictionary balanced
🌲 Half_Elf_Monk · May 02 at 20:25:
This is pretty fun! Thanks for making it.
🥜 smallpatatas [OP] · May 03 at 01:42:
Hey @Half_Elf_Monk sorry about this - I forgot that I should have made the user data file untracked by git (first public-facing app I've ever made, bound to be some hiccups unfortunately) and now my silly noob ass overwrote your 8-letter word. I'll try and avoid making the same mistake again. Ughhh sorry
It was fun. I got to 112 points under the name boglin but I’m not on the scoreboard today. The 6x6 grid felt large - or maybe it was just that the number of possible words was large. Did you playtest a 5x5 grid? It would be good to show what yesterday’s longest word was.
Edit: oh it’s 5x5 today! This is better. Nice work!
🌲 Half_Elf_Monk · May 03 at 07:00:
@smalpatatas - all good. thanks for making a public-facing game. i imagine your... CASELOAD of things to think through is increased.
I'm not good at word games, i've found two words that are at least five letters but neither of them are in the dictionary :( "felted" and "tagalog". "tagalog" is a proper noun, but you might want to add "felted" to the dictionary
🥜 smallpatatas [OP] · May 03 at 15:49:
@lamb-duh thanks, I will add it!
🥜 smallpatatas [OP] · May 03 at 15:56:
@lab6 yeah sorry about the scoreboard getting messed up. I had done a 'git pull' onto the server and for some reason it reverted the day's data file, sorry :(
showing the previous day's longest word is a great idea - will do that in the next (more careful) update
I found it surprisingly difficult for some reason.
🥜 smallpatatas [OP] · May 04 at 00:08:
@stack I definitely found that it took me a few minutes to switch my brain between spellbinding and gobble, not sure why!
Anyway i also wanted to say, thanks for your advice and thoughts about the game-running process. Just added a list of around 50 words(!) to a copy of the dictionary, will swap it out shortly before the game resets at midnight ET
🌲 Half_Elf_Monk · May 04 at 02:43:
is FOLATE a word in this dictionary?
🥜 smallpatatas [OP] · May 04 at 03:49:
@Half_Elf_Monk not yet but I've made a note to add it in the next batch, thanks!