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I liked the idea of scrabble combined with the theme of waves. I also really liked the wave based power ups that you had (although I think that for the game jam, the game should have those enabled by default).

A bit of feedback on the UI/UX of the game:

  • The start menu was a bit of a mental overload. Waves going everywhere, large title for the game (good), and a whole bunch of links to different websites. I had to realize that this was the start screen and look for the play button (which I like the theming of btw). I would make the play button much bigger and centered. Then I would anchor all of the links to the bottom of the page where they are not taking up the main portion of the screen.
  • Level select screen had a similar problem to the home screen where the waves were very distracting. Maybe if you really want the waves, you could move the spawning point to off-screen and then let the growth of the wave draw the user's attention to the middle of the screen instead of away from it.
  • In the main game after moving a couple of times, there are these huge white waves at the bottom of the screen. Other than to try and make the game go with the theme, I'm not really sure of the purpose. I think that removing these would be beneficial to the game because they cover up a good portion of the game board when they are there.

Thanks for taking the time to post. Yes, the big waves at the bottom of game are there for theme, but they also indicate 'high tide'.  When those are shown you can place words that are unattached to others.  Floating words. Lol

Yeah, the title screen and menu select just a bunch of html and overloaded waves.  I will probably remove a lot of waves things and adjust the title screen and game menu you mentioned after the rating period based on your excellent suggestions.

I believe the even numbered, or perhaps the upper level game numbers enable those wave rules by default. I found that they are difficult to follow so I wanted at least game/wave level 1 to be easy,.and without them.  It seems you really took some time to see all that is there., thanks for that.  I did spend many days always adding (probably too much) to the game and waves idea.

(+1)

Hey lostwords:

After reading your reply, i think your ideas were spot on - maybe just a bit more in game explaining to show what each thing was for. I like your idea for taking out the power ups for the first couple of levels of they are confusing. Maybe just remove the icons all together and then add them back when you want to introduce the mechanic so the player isn't confused about what they don't do. I actually do think the high tide idea is pretty funny and i think it is a great mechanic for Scrabble. An idea could be a short popup / cutscene that shows a text box that says "High Tide" with the waves going very large across the screen - then after that cutscene finishes, drop the waves all the way down to the bottom of the screen so you can still see them but they arent blocking anything. I'm kinda thinking like 5-10% of the screen size.

Just some ideas...

Cheers,

Daragard

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I'm guessing you are overall a big scrabble fan?  Wish there were more simultaneous players so you could get to experience the multiplayer aspect.. free for all, not turn based.  


PS The game should also work on a smart TV web browser, and perhaps an entire room/family can play at the same time in the same room.  


There is also the ability to make your own words (family names, etc) for such an experience.  There is a small pencil icon on the menu screen.  That creates a link that if shared should get everyone in the same custom game.

I have a self-hosted version running that I will continue to update while the rating period is on-going.  Feel free to give it a look.  I'll probably incorporate several of your UI improvement ideas.

https://pasciak.com/GitHubGameJamItch/index.html

thanks again.