
Letterpress Deconstructed - by_Seeing
http://blog.gaborcselle.com/2012/11/letterpress-deconstructed.html
======
nbashaw
I was hoping for more analysis of the game mechanics, rather than the UI.

I love how letterpress is really a territory game disguised as a word game.
Instead of rolling a dice like you do in Risk, you find words to form your
attacks. Rather than trying to pick up words with obscure letters, or lengthy
words, you try to capture strategic tiles and expand your controlled area.
Once you cover a large area of dark blue tiles, you choke out your opponent's
ability to score points, and the game slowly snowballs further in your favor.
It's really fascinating.

~~~
chubot
Yeah it also has an interesting aspect where the loser can win all of the
sudden. It makes it a little more exciting. To win you have to plan carefully.
If you leave the wrong set of black tiles on the board, you can get surprised.

Also I like how you can attack and defend simultaneously. If the opponent goes
first, then they'll stake out a corner. And then I will attack their corner
and stake out my own corner simulataneously, as long as there's a big enough
word on the board.

------
pflats
"The app and its website both play the mystery card. No mention of who made it
and where it came from, but I found this Mashable piece that provides a bit
more background."

This seemed bizarre to me, so I went looking. There's like half a dozen places
on the website with background:

It's in the FAQ: <http://www.atebits.com/support/faq/what-is-atebits/>

The News page: <http://www.atebits.com/news/> ("atebits 2.0 October 15, 2012
In 2007 I left Apple...")

The Contact page: <http://www.atebits.com/contact/> ("Follow us on Twitter at
@atebits and @lorenb.")

The Press Kit: <http://www.atebits.com/contact/press/atebits-presskit.zip>
(Contains an about.txt that's exactly what it says.)

All of these are one or two clicks away (except the press kit, which is 3).
Loren's not exactly bragging about his background on the front page, but if
you're going to say he's secret and mysterious, at least take the time out of
your day click a link or two.

~~~
gaborcselle
Thanks pflats for pointing this out. I changed the post and added a note with
a link to this comment.

------
xuki
The wait spinner rotates anti clockwise once every 8 turns, not randomly. The
"Zoom into game" part is very much a replicate of the photo app behavior. Also
it's very hard to tell Loren implemented his own scroll view in OpenGL,
apparently he did a really good job:
<https://twitter.com/lorenb/status/261336421888036865>

~~~
gaborcselle
Excellent point. Corrected and added [3].

~~~
sartakdotorg
You should remove the word "randomly" from that sentence, since it's anything
but random.

------
mikeash
The UI of this game is so impressive that it appears to be nothing special on
first blush. Everything just fits and works like it should. It's a beautiful
example of the near invisibility of some types of good design.

~~~
gurkendoktor
This is a pretty good talk on how to make such a simple UI be fun. Letterpress
does a lot of it...

[http://indiegames.com/2012/10/video_is_your_game_juicy_enoug...](http://indiegames.com/2012/10/video_is_your_game_juicy_enoug.html)

Also, multitouch! Even most jigsaw puzzle games on iOS are inexplicably
limited to a single finger. This attention to detail is amazing.

------
gurkendoktor
I think the biggest drawback is the lack of a ranking score. Almost every
random internet player has been absolutely clueless about the rules of the
game, not to mention the tactics. From a quick look at the GameKit docs, that
seems to be a limitation of using (only) GameCenter to find players.

------
dmishe
Nope this is not UIKit, Loren stated that the whole UI is implemented in
OpenGL

~~~
wallflower
More from the interview with Loren Brichter:

> LB: It’s all custom. The whole game is actually written in OpenGL with my
> own animation system and a bunch of other neat things.

[http://www.macstories.net/featured/a-conversation-with-
loren...](http://www.macstories.net/featured/a-conversation-with-loren-
brichter/)

~~~
gaborcselle
Thanks, I didn't realize this. I've updated the sentence in the article with a
reference to your comment.

------
alenox
My friends stopped this game when we realized that in a relatively even
matchup, the first player will win about 85 percent of the time. Going second
is just so much of a huge disadvantage. The first player can surround 2 or
more spaces easily leaving player 2 always playing catchup and defense. I'd
like to see a future version that fixes this. Also, sometimes a game can get
stuck in the endgame with both players playing chicken, not selecting any of
the last few letters. Both situations are less than awesome game dynamics that
need to be addressed.

------
shennyg
Loren made the game because he wanted a simple word game to play with his
wife.

Hear more from him firsthand on the first episode of debug:
<http://www.zenandtech.tv/debug/debug-1-brichter-letterpress/>

------
mayanks
There are two subtle aspect of the game. Both based on simplicity. First the
actual rules of the game. Just like angry birds almost anyone can pick it up
and start playing from the word go. The other is about the platform (read iOS)
that helps you treat a simple action like flicking a tile such a joy.

I was so intrigued by the first part that I actually cloned the app so I could
use it on non iOS platform. But the beauty of the app just could not be
reecreated. It was just a hack and made in two days with not much thought into
the ui. FYI, the clone is at <http://letter-press.herokuapp.com>

------
seivan
So well made that the author thought it was piggy backed on UIKit. :-) all
compliments.

------
Kerrick
Visually, it reminds me quite a bit of an Android game called Gyro.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.submachine....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.submachine.gyro)

