

Show HN: iPhone word game I created in 5 days - Word Fever - jazzychad
http://app.net/wordfever

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JFPetersen
Very nice game. Do you mind if I make a few criticisms?

The icons on the opening page take up a lot of space - the bottom 1/4 of the
page - and compete with the app for my focus. I would suggest separating them
from the start button with some space & moving them a little closer to each
other. Maybe even shrink the size of those buttons.

Since I'm mentioning focus, I think the tiles kind of get lost during the
game, too. There isn't really anything that makes them stand out, and they are
surrounded (crowded) by several large buttons. The visual focus should be on
the tiles and the word line. The other buttons should be out of the way.

When playing the game, the shuffle button is too close to the bottom row of
tiles. Maybe swap its position with the pause button & move them both down,
away from the tiles. Also, I occasionally press "shuffle" rather than
"submit", and I'm sure it has something to do with the buttons' positions.

I'm still unclear about the bonus & combo multipliers. What's the point of the
combo multiplier? Does it effect my score at all? And how, exactly, is the
bonus multiplier calculated? Since it affects my score, I'd like to know how
it comes about. Maybe it's just me, but feel a need to know these details.

I don't think it's necessary, but I kept looking for a "last word" button
similar to the one used in Word Warp. I often want to riff off of the last
word, and I'd rather hit "last" & modify the word than type it in each time
from scratch. Of course, adding yet another button isn't necessarily a good
thing....

Most timed games that I've played will pause when you hit the countdown timer.
You may be able to gain some more space by eliminating the "pause" button all
together & implementing the "hit the timer to pause" feature. (I'd say it's
common enough to be an expected feature of timed games.)

I really like the portrait view. Holding my iPod in landscape just doesn't
feel as natural to me & I tend to use landscape games less and less. I know
that's just a personal preference, but I think you got it right.

Overall, it's a fun game. I often test free games & then delete them, but I
see this one staying on my iPod. Good job, and good luck.

~~~
jazzychad
Thanks, I appreciate the feedback!

The bonus and combo multipliers are explained in the Help section (press the
"?" tile on the game screen before or after a game (or when its paused)).
Basically the combo multiplier goes up 1 each time you spell a word with the
same set of 12 tiles. If you hit shuffle, the combo goes back to 0. The bonus
multiplier goes up each time you spell a word, and the amount it increases
depends on the length of the word (the longer the word, the more the bonus
increases).

I'll consider the "hit the timer to pause" feature. I hadn't noticed that in
many other games, but it makes sense.

Thanks for the other feedback, too. I'll consider it for updating the visual
layout.

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notaddicted
Lovely, I like word games, I've left you a review.

Why did you decide to go portrait instead of landscape?

What was time spent on design (not the graphics, but planning the interactions
and the rules of the game) versus time spent on implementation?

edit: Also, do you have any go-to books that you use for game/app development?

~~~
jazzychad
Portrait because "Words with Friends" and "Hanging With Friends" are portrait,
so people are used to that, and because I wanted to be able to play with one
hand (while hanging onto the subway handrail, eg).

Idea design: one night maybe. Wanted to think of the simplest yet compelling
rules for a word game that used scrabble-like tiles. Some interactions were
tweaked along the way because of the physical layout on the screen, but most
everything was thought up that first night.

Time on implementation: a few days. Getting the whole game engine working was
pretty fast, then just integrating the logic with the interface took a while.
Learned about (and added) multi-player through Game Center in one sit-down
session on a Friday night.

The part that took the longest (it feels like) was just entering all of the
Leaderboard and Achievement data into the Game Center console on Apple's site.
Then of course writing the logic in the game to trigger each achievement when
they should be unlocked.

The graphics: several hours, probably a total of 10. Tweaking the tiles took
the longest.

edit: added to answer parent's edit: I don't have go-to books really. This was
the first game I've ever written (except for Rock, Paper, Scissors in BASIC
when I was 9). So I just was learning as I went. Usually I just use
Google/Stack Overflow for technical questions, but for the game part I just
mashed together observations I had made while playing other apps (especially
word games lately).

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OpenAmazing
Looks great.

Does Hasbro (owner of Scrabble) have any IP protection on the wooden letter
tiles with a number in the corner? Seems like a small thing, but it wouldn't
shock me. And could be an issue if this gets big.

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flannell
Your app looks great. Nice and simple interface, multi-play and fast paced
action. Good job!

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kyro
Quick suggestion: you may want to make the screenshots of the app transition a
bit more quickly; it takes like 10 seconds for the first image to move (for
me, at least).

~~~
jazzychad
unfortunately that's out of my control since app.net is a 3rd party service
I'm using to host my landing page.

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daimyoyo
Well done, sir. Your kung fu is strong.

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danest
In these types games how do you check to see if a word a user typed is a
'real' word?

~~~
eam
There is dictionary it probably checks against. In example:
<http://www.calvin.edu/~rpruim/scrabble/ospd3.txt>

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joakin
How are you going to monetize?

Any chance it goes open source? :)

Good job btw

~~~
jazzychad
There are different modes (timed, endless, battle). "1 Minute" mode is free,
and you can unlock the other modes with in-app purchases.

~~~
StavrosK
_Completely_ off-topic, but the Notifo Android client no longer shows HN reply
notifications on my phone. They show up if I refresh, and they're sent
immediately on my iPhone, but they don't show up on the Android notifications
bar. I have HN notifications set to silent, the other (non-silent)
notifications I have set come in just fine on my Android phone.

I know you guys aren't so hot on Notifo any more, but is there any chance you
could have a look? It's putting a serious damper on my participation here!

~~~
jazzychad
That's strange. I'll look into it.

~~~
StavrosK
Thanks! You can contact me at stavros@korokithakis.net if you need any further
testing.

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coryl
Any frameworks/engines used?

~~~
aherlambang
interested in the answer to this question as well.. also did you design it in
5 days as well or you have a designer to work on that?

~~~
jazzychad
no frameworks or engines. I wrote my own primitive 'word game engine' for
another app (a cheat app for Hanging With Friends) and decided to reuse it to
make my own game.

All the design was done by me as well... it's not the sexiest, but I think it
is good enough for now. I used Opacity - <http://likethought.com/opacity/> \-
to create all the graphical assets, which was a real time-saver.

~~~
msie
Wow! Opacity looks great! Somehow, I haven't stumbled upon this before.
Thanks!

