1) Every time I refresh the game, all of the letters are different and stacked differently. The randomness is good.
2) I like how you guys decided to use 4 columns, which adds to the challenge of building 3 words.
3) I like the music. It's not too overwhelming for a puzzle game.
4) Definitely, fits with the game depth theme.
The idea is unique and stands out to me among the other prototypes. I like how you combined the idea of a word puzzle game to a tower of hanoi type of thing, it is kind of like combining two types of logical reasoning. I also really like the sound effects when you move the letter around, very crisp, sounds like as if I'm moving the tiles in real life.
There's definitely depth as there is the puzzle solving aspect and the word building aspect in it. Player can also can get better by seeing how many steps can they do to solve the puzzle - less step, improve.
Aesthetically, it's really satisfying! The music, the sfx, the wooden tiles, and the rest of the theming creates a really relaxing vibe. The core conceit of building words as a puzzle has real promise, too!
Its a fun take on a tower of hanoi style puzzle with word elements, a kind of advanced scrabble in a way
It's an interesting idea, and I'm always a fan of new word games. The idea of combining the classic Towers of Hanoi puzzle with something like Scrabble is really neat, and I think the subtle aesthetics of the game are appropriate to the theme.
The controls are good, as it makes it very fast to just swap letters. Kind of a cup stacking-esque pace can be made.
The game is easy to understand but challenging. The game handles bug well.
I loved this game! I played it a bunch and it kind of felt like wordle.
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What could this game have done better?
****************************
1) Timer starts automatically when I first open the game and I was still trying to understand how to play. Maybe have a opening room or button that you can press before starting the game.
2) The step count and timer doesn't seem to add much to the game right now. But I can see how you can store the player's result and display their performance over a period of playing the game.
3) A personal preference, but the colors are a bit dull. Especially in each of the letters, a shadow is sort of casting over the visibility of the letters.
I think it may be a little unclear as to what the players need to do at first and whether the words read vertically or horizontally. Also a tiny nit pick is that the background music sounds very casual and chill so maybe you can also make the colors of your game reflect that mood by having lighter colors.
In terms of depth, I think it would be better if you start out with an easier level to build the player's skills such as a level with one word.
Controls are a bit confusing so I wasted some of my steps to get used to the controls. I feel like adding a short tutorial would be ideal
So... there's really two games here, depending on if you know that you have to assemble 'Stack The Word' or not. If you don't know that, this game is a miserable slog to play through with almost no depth to it of any kind. You can't really get 'better' unless you know the secret code. It feels like an exploration game, but there's not really anything to explore; just a right answer hidden through obscurity.
However. once you know what you're trying to do, it becomes kind of an interesting stacking puzzle to see how fast you can assemble 'Stack the Word', which has some dexterity based depth to it!
Once you know what the words are, its just about handling the control. The skill ceiling might start off pretty high but it falls off, so steps forward for this could be in randomizing the word choice (or as a challenge, making it tetris style where you can only clear out lines with real words!)
Some sort of feedback (screenshake, particles, etc.) when you manipulate the letters would have gone a long way, I think! Also you should add a couple extra words to your dictionary: in my playthrough it didn't accept the word 'tack'!
I don't feel like too much 'base' skill is involved and that all challenge is self imposed once you found out what you're supposed to spell, plus it doesn't accept other words as far as I can tell.
If the game can include more words selections like wordle, the game could be more challenging.
I think it would be cool if one word was given to the player. This way it’s less confusing but still challenging.
Comments
What did this game do well?
****************************
1) Every time I refresh the game, all of the letters are different and stacked differently. The randomness is good.
2) I like how you guys decided to use 4 columns, which adds to the challenge of building 3 words.
3) I like the music. It's not too overwhelming for a puzzle game.
4) Definitely, fits with the game depth theme.
The idea is unique and stands out to me among the other prototypes. I like how you combined the idea of a word puzzle game to a tower of hanoi type of thing, it is kind of like combining two types of logical reasoning. I also really like the sound effects when you move the letter around, very crisp, sounds like as if I'm moving the tiles in real life.
There's definitely depth as there is the puzzle solving aspect and the word building aspect in it. Player can also can get better by seeing how many steps can they do to solve the puzzle - less step, improve.
Aesthetically, it's really satisfying! The music, the sfx, the wooden tiles, and the rest of the theming creates a really relaxing vibe. The core conceit of building words as a puzzle has real promise, too!
Its a fun take on a tower of hanoi style puzzle with word elements, a kind of advanced scrabble in a way
It's an interesting idea, and I'm always a fan of new word games. The idea of combining the classic Towers of Hanoi puzzle with something like Scrabble is really neat, and I think the subtle aesthetics of the game are appropriate to the theme.
The controls are good, as it makes it very fast to just swap letters. Kind of a cup stacking-esque pace can be made.
The game is easy to understand but challenging. The game handles bug well.
I loved this game! I played it a bunch and it kind of felt like wordle.
========================================
What could this game have done better?
****************************
1) Timer starts automatically when I first open the game and I was still trying to understand how to play. Maybe have a opening room or button that you can press before starting the game.
2) The step count and timer doesn't seem to add much to the game right now. But I can see how you can store the player's result and display their performance over a period of playing the game.
3) A personal preference, but the colors are a bit dull. Especially in each of the letters, a shadow is sort of casting over the visibility of the letters.
I think it may be a little unclear as to what the players need to do at first and whether the words read vertically or horizontally. Also a tiny nit pick is that the background music sounds very casual and chill so maybe you can also make the colors of your game reflect that mood by having lighter colors.
In terms of depth, I think it would be better if you start out with an easier level to build the player's skills such as a level with one word.
Controls are a bit confusing so I wasted some of my steps to get used to the controls. I feel like adding a short tutorial would be ideal
So... there's really two games here, depending on if you know that you have to assemble 'Stack The Word' or not. If you don't know that, this game is a miserable slog to play through with almost no depth to it of any kind. You can't really get 'better' unless you know the secret code. It feels like an exploration game, but there's not really anything to explore; just a right answer hidden through obscurity.
However. once you know what you're trying to do, it becomes kind of an interesting stacking puzzle to see how fast you can assemble 'Stack the Word', which has some dexterity based depth to it!
Once you know what the words are, its just about handling the control. The skill ceiling might start off pretty high but it falls off, so steps forward for this could be in randomizing the word choice (or as a challenge, making it tetris style where you can only clear out lines with real words!)
Some sort of feedback (screenshake, particles, etc.) when you manipulate the letters would have gone a long way, I think! Also you should add a couple extra words to your dictionary: in my playthrough it didn't accept the word 'tack'!
I don't feel like too much 'base' skill is involved and that all challenge is self imposed once you found out what you're supposed to spell, plus it doesn't accept other words as far as I can tell.
If the game can include more words selections like wordle, the game could be more challenging.
I think it would be cool if one word was given to the player. This way it’s less confusing but still challenging.