Brilliant ! Super simple idea for an extremely polished game ! Once you start to have using cross words that are neither similar to the start nor the end then it gets serious. Not sure what was the point of having a max number of flips since you get a score anyway that could be sufficient as an incentive to optimize the path you take. Really loved the experience !
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Thank you very much. Regarding the max flips, part of it is to force the players to realize the mechanic of optimizing # flips instead of standard ladder games of minimum number of words. I did consider removing it completely and just letting the score be the only driving motivator... I think in a more polished version I would do a lot more work on the score tuning and par values to try to get the score to be more interesting. Glad you enjoyed it though!
Yeah i feel like an updated version could incorporate new elements in the game such as forced or forbidden letters to “pass through”, or jokers that let you use a blank and make a shorter word once in a while. It looks like with this framework you’ve built you can flesh this a lot more in the future !