itch.io

Indeed, I couldn't resist!

Not my pancakes!!

Oh, I see! When I saw this link posted in Thinky Games discord I thought it was the demo I should check out for the game, so I wanted to try it and give feedback, but sounds like it’s not really representative of the latest improvements. You could add a comment to that effect in the itch page description so folks can decide if they want to try this one or wait for the updated demo.

Yeah, thanks for the idea, and this isn’t the first time someone mentioned that. I’ll come up with a more aesthetic solution later, but for now I just added a confirmation popup to the reset button.

Oh man, thanks for pointing that out, that would be your garden variety mistake on my part. Fixed!

I want the game to flow well on mobile, so I added a lot of features like automatic selection and scrolling… but I got some great feedback that those can also get in the way, so I just made some changes. Please let me know what you think or if you have any other pet peeves.

(Keyboard entry hasn’t changed and is a lot simpler - the selection always advances to the next square - because it’s easy to move the selection with the arrow keys, so this is aimed at mobile players, especially if you play in portrait orientation.)

1. Selection is no longer automatically advanced to a new row, unless it’s the same word.
   • After picking a letter, if the next space is empty, selection moves there, but now that does not apply if you’re at the end of the row and at the end of a word. This is so you can continue working on that side of the grid.
2. When selection is auto-advanced after picking a letter, that no longer scrolls the whole word into view.
   • It will scroll slightly to get the selected square into view if necessary, but will otherwise leave you where you were.
   • If you tap a square to select it, that still does scroll the whole word into view - so just tap the next word if you want to focus on it.
3. Skip over already-filled letters in the same word when auto-advancing.
   • If the next spot is already filled, but there are empty spaces later in the word, move selection there.
   • Also, if the end of the word is now filled, but the beginning has empty spaces, move selection to the beginning. I’m not sure about this one, so let me know.
4. Adjusted swap logic so clicking an empty square doesn’t move the currently selected letter.
5. Fixed the scroll word into view logic for words that are too wide for the screen. ​

The logic is a bit complex, but my goal is the net effect is it should feel intuitive and save you some taps. Let me know what you think as you try it out! (If you have a specific situation to comment on, if can take a screenshot and note exactly what order you did things in, that would be amazing.)

Just gave this a shot! The visuals look great and I love the idea of crafting words to get the different outcomes. But I did find it a little frustrating to play so far. Having a good word to solve the Wordle be a bad word in terms of effects was a bit more annoying than fun, and it felt dispiriting when the reels were all or almost all bad.

I wonder if you would consider having the reels be all positive things, and the enemy attacks you on a separate schedule? That would feel a lot more positive and exciting. There might be different values of positive effects which you might or might not want in a given situation.

An alternate thought I had was it would be nice if the green reel was generally more positive than the gray reel, instead of them being the same across the board. That way, your goals are usually still aligned, with rarer interruptions where you want to avoid green.

I didn't like that I had to start the first guess with no information and just suffer the consequences. Could there be an initial guess before rolling the reels for effects, to give you a starting point to make decisions for the next guesses?

Sorry for the unsolicited ideas, but I do think this is a fun idea so it inspired me to brainstorm about it. 🙂

This comment made me laugh but also cry because it's so hard to come up with names. 😂

Looks like Craig Danielsen was just a transcription error from a The Daily Spell intern, and his name has now been corrected to the hopefully less distracting Gregory Danielsen. ✨ (There may still be a Brosnan out there though. 😄)

Ahh this is fixed now. Everything was ready (and the-daily-spell.com was successfully updated), but I had failed to hit the button to publish Tuesday's puzzle to itch.io. 🤦‍♀️ Thank you so much for letting me know, it's a huge help!

Post your results and discuss the events of week 9, Jan 5-11, here. Spoilers for this and past weeks are fine.

Wow, playing as a non-native speaker does sound tricky, so I'm really glad you're enjoying it! The headline syntax is a bit of a mix between the concise style you'd see in a real headline and normal sentence structure, so hopefully you're not finding it too awkward. :)

Thanks! So this would be something to use while you're mid-solve to confirm if you're on the right track? That's useful to hear that would be helpful. I'm thinking of eventually adding some more validate/hint options in a menu so will keep this one in mind! 

Thanks so much for the heads up, fixed!

Okay, this made me laugh. I did change the wording so it's not too distracting, but please imagine whatever pajama hijinks would be most entertaining. 😄

I found it so hard to narrow down what could go where, but the discoveries were totally worth persevering! What a cleverly constructed game.

Thank you! 😊 Glad you're enjoying it!

Post your results and discuss the events of week 8, Dec 29-Jan 4, here. Spoilers for this and past weeks are fine.

Oops, I keep being late to start the weekly thread, sorry! I blame the holidays.

Afraid not, I just had to google that! Glad you enjoyed.

Really enjoyed this! Clever puzzle and the presentation is really clean and nice. It was hard enough that it was really satisfying whenever one fell into place. I did look at a few hints (as well as googled one thing) and thought the hints were well-calibrated as nudges.

I'll answer this because I meant to make it clear but missed doing so, sorry. The surges have only started recently. Before the surges, the latent ability to channel power hasn't done anything. (We'll revisit the surges and why they're happening later!)

Post your results and discuss the events of week 7, Dec 22-28, here. Spoilers for this and past weeks are fine.

Ooh, very interesting idea, will think about that too!

Hm, yeah. Added a note to How to Play and I'll think about other options. It's the kind of thing where once you know it, you don't need a reminder every time. Probably a more active tutorialization of the first couple puzzles could help, since it could point that out in context, but that's a larger change. Or making a clearer pause state, which you could use to go check out other puzzles... I'll keep pondering. Thanks for the feedback!

I added a comment about that in How to Play, good call out. (Also, one day I might also make some tweaks to the first couple weeks of puzzles, since those are some of the trickiest with things like names, and new players go through them first...

Okay, added some changes that should help with words that wrap:

• The columns of the selected word are highlighted in purple, so it's easier to spot if it wraps.
• An arrow icon appears next to the wrapped word when the word is selected, and you can click the arrow to jump across the break.

Tab and shift-tab added! 🙂

Couple more tweaks! I added an arrow on words that wrap to a new line. It gives a clear indicator that the word wraps, and you can tap/click it to jump to the other part of the word. I especially hope this will be useful for folks playing in mobile portrait mode.

You can! It doesn’t clear the current puzzle if you change to a previous day, go to the archive, etc. (The clock does keep running - pausing it is on my todo list.) 

I wonder how I can make that clear..? I don’t want people to feel frustrated thinking they can’t see previous articles. I’ll at least add a note to How to Play.

Really enjoyed this one! The personality coming through the directions was so charming, it made me want to do my best. 🙂 The look and the way that features combine were really nice too.

I got caught up while bugfixing and made some other changes. I'm very curious to hear whether it works well for people and happy to tweak things further.

• Added word highlighting where the current word and its columns will be shown in purple. My hope is this makes it easier to focus on the word. It also makes it clear when a word wraps to a new line!
  • I got this idea from Gisnep, an existing daily drop quote puzzle I just learned about! If you're hungry for more drop quote/quotefall puzzles, check them out.
• Fix: the little jiggle when tiles land in a spot is gone! (Maybe nobody noticed it? 🤞) It was due to a slightly off position for the tile drop animation, which is now fixed.
• Fix: tile overwriting bug which could cause letters to be permanently lost, discussed here.

I've also been tweaking the tutorial wording and layout a bit, happy to get more feedback on that. Thanks all! 🙂

I think this is fixed now! Letters should be immediately marked as placed even when the animation is still going on, so sending the second letter will put the first letter back in the top column rather than overwriting it.

I'm not exactly sure how you managed to run into this - to test it I had to slow the animation down to give myself time to click, haha - but please let me know if you're still seeing it after the fix. Thanks again for the bug report!

Ahh thanks for letting me know! I need to do some investigation into how this happened, will get a fix out as soon as I can.

Hmm. I just tried and clicking on her portrait (not her name) in the post-tutorial scene with the king works for me. Is that what you’re trying? I’m not aware of any bugs with it, but maybe try a different browser to see if that makes a difference? Let me know.

Ah, okay, the good news is I pushed an update yesterday with a heading that says "Try it" above the tutorial grid so maybe that would help. 🙂 I also added a point about the words wrapping just now, so hope that helps others avoid the confusion.

Hey, thanks for playing! I was hoping that the tutorial would introduce that words can wrap. Curious if you clicked How to Play and if you solved the whole tutorial puzzle? (Not judging, just gathering info on how people approach it.) Would a line like "Words can wrap from one line to the next" in How to Play help?

If it's a recurring issue I can look at adding an indicator, but I was hoping that once players get used to keeping an eye out for it, it's just one facet of the challenge of the puzzle. Definitely looking for more feedback on this from you or anyone reading this, thanks!

Thank you! Yeah, I've been doing my best to make the How to Play screen clear so people find out that you can type. 😄 Good idea about Delete, I just updated it, so let me know what you think.

I'm also happy to add other keyboard shortcuts (Tab to jump words??) if people have some they would like to use that aren't currently working.

Good to know, I’ll definitely be taking another look at the tutorial sometime soon. Thank you again!

Thank you for playing and making a video!!

I enjoyed hearing your thoughts, very helpful! I do like the tutorial letting players play around and learn how it works on their own, but I can see that some more direct context-setting and steps to follow could help people get started, so will definitely think more about that. Totally appreciate your comments about sound, that's on the list but I'll move it up. 🙂

Now that I have this wonderful record of you playing, let me pepper you with some nitty-gritty questions. 😄

I'm curious if you tried typing to fill letters? I want either typing or clicking to work, so it can be a matter of preference - just want to make sure it's clear you can type (it's mentioned in How to Play but maybe seeing the tutorial puzzle to dive into is too distracting?) And I saw you ended up misclicking a few times, like at 8:32... Wondering if there's any interactions that would feel more natural than how it works now, or if it's just a matter of getting used to how the spot selection works?

When you said "It looks like it splits into two words" at 5:45, I think that's because the dark letter tiles look too similar to the blank spots? Seeing it a new perspective on it, I think I'll darken the blank spots all the way to black to make that distinction stronger.

Again, super helpful to see this, and I also appreciate you sharing the game! Thank you!

Thanks! That's a good idea. I'm pushing the idea of solving the current week because I want people to be aware you don't have to solve the whole archive... but totally, if it were me I would want to start from the beginning too. I just added a "Go to start" button to the bottom of the tutorial popup.

🙂