4 ms·

Shrinkle – Shrink words, find hidden phrase

74 points by onion92 1y ago

Miraltar 1y ago
Lots of people seem to complain that it's too easy but as a non native speaker it was too hard for me and it felt super frustrating cause you can't retry or see the solution
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
tgv 1y ago
Funny, but a bit too easy, I think. At least, I got a warning when I made an error (my only one), which makes light work of progress. The fact that I had only one error is an indication of the ease (I'm not a native speaker of English), and complex puzzling usually involves backtracking or multiple tries to achieve a single step.
tlh 1y ago
I enjoy the concept, and think you could be onto something - but it seemed a bit too easy to be satisfying. I think the path to solving the puzzle is a bit too straightforward. That is, removing a letter one by one WILL get you to the solution, and there’s not enough of a cognitive work-out to figure out the next one to remove. I don’t have a solution mind you, but having made Stackdown and been on a similar journey, I needed the feedback to get it where it is now. Keep going! Oh, also I really like the tidy design.
pimlottc 1y ago
The "how to play" demo animation should show two words to demonstrate the "hidden phrase" feature
- lorenzohess 1y ago
  Agreed. I thought you had to find two words within one.
tobr 1y ago
What is the hidden phrase? I suppose ”Plants plans plan pan” can be understood as a grammatically correct phrase, but a really quite odd one. I don’t think that’s what’s intended to be a hidden phrase?
- jmholla 1y ago
  The hidden phrase is the two words left at the end of the game.
  - croemer 1y ago
    Aged Wine
righthand 1y ago
I was upset I couldn’t keep popping off letters even though I had discovered the “hidden phrase”. Give me the bubble wrap umami and let me continue whittling away until there aren’t any subwords left.
mNovak 1y ago
Fun, but like others have said, felt somewhat easy. Or really, it feels like the gameplay is too short. Maybe you can shrink down a word, then replace it with a longer synonym or something, and repeat? That way you get a couple rounds of gameplay per puzzle.
croemer 1y ago
Feels user hostile that there's no retry button. I can delete browser storage but why...
- butz 1y ago
  Especially for first time players this is absolutely worst experience. Combined with "game knows better", where even valid choice is incorrect, makes this game not fun.
  - onion92 1y ago
    Hi, there was a bug today for Australian players that was fixed now. Maybe this is your case. What word is ok and not recognized by the game? We can check and include it.
onion92 1y ago
Hi everyone, I am glad that people are enjoying playing Shrinkle. I appreciate all your feedback and I am working to improve the experience. Thanks
CMay 1y ago
Would it be possible to have 3-4 words and you have to make sure that each word you produce results in a valid phrase? So not only the final phrase makes sense, but you have to navigate through a path of valid phrases. This way you might remove a letter from different words and have to think ahead to decide if the result would remain coherent in order to avoid an error. The computational complexity of identifying phrases that can be reduced like this while having a coherent path might increase rapidly.
svarrall 1y ago
My only confusion was when I’d correctly reduced one word to the required for the phrase, but didn’t get any feedback that it was correct. I didn’t understand why it wouldn’t accept my “valid” shorter word
windowshopping 1y ago
I find it very funny that somebody domain parked shrinkle.com and thinks they can get $6695 for it.
xdfgh1112 1y ago
It is unsatisfying to find a removal that leads to a valid word but be told it's "wrong".
ckrapu 1y ago
I love the idea but when I tried to reduce "SCARFS" to "CAR" (the right answer) it rejected my choice of S, but let me select the other letters. Looks like a bug. Clean it up and I would love to play more!
- onion92 1y ago
  There was a bug for Australian players that is fixed now! Thank you!
neogodless 1y ago
Is it broken today? Seems like getting to the "solution" isn't working for anyone... even if you get 3 errors it just doesn't tell you the correct answer.
- onion92 1y ago
  There was a bug that is fixed now. Thank you!
  - neogodless 1y ago
    Thanks! Today my spouse had a bug that the demo phrase VALLEY SCENT loaded for the puzzle of the day, and was not able to solve to the actual phrase it was looking for.

74 points by onion92 1y ago

Lots of people seem to complain that it's too easy but as a non native speaker it was too hard for me and it felt super frustrating cause you can't retry or see the solution

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

tgv 1y ago

Funny, but a bit too easy, I think. At least, I got a warning when I made an error (my only one), which makes light work of progress. The fact that I had only one error is an indication of the ease (I'm not a native speaker of English), and complex puzzling usually involves backtracking or multiple tries to achieve a single step.

tlh 1y ago

I enjoy the concept, and think you could be onto something - but it seemed a bit too easy to be satisfying. I think the path to solving the puzzle is a bit too straightforward. That is, removing a letter one by one WILL get you to the solution, and there’s not enough of a cognitive work-out to figure out the next one to remove. I don’t have a solution mind you, but having made Stackdown and been on a similar journey, I needed the feedback to get it where it is now. Keep going! Oh, also I really like the tidy design.

pimlottc 1y ago

The "how to play" demo animation should show two words to demonstrate the "hidden phrase" feature

lorenzohess 1y ago
Agreed. I thought you had to find two words within one.

tobr 1y ago

What is the hidden phrase? I suppose ”Plants plans plan pan” can be understood as a grammatically correct phrase, but a really quite odd one. I don’t think that’s what’s intended to be a hidden phrase?

jmholla 1y ago
The hidden phrase is the two words left at the end of the game.
- croemer 1y ago
  Aged Wine

righthand 1y ago

I was upset I couldn’t keep popping off letters even though I had discovered the “hidden phrase”. Give me the bubble wrap umami and let me continue whittling away until there aren’t any subwords left.

mNovak 1y ago

Fun, but like others have said, felt somewhat easy. Or really, it feels like the gameplay is too short. Maybe you can shrink down a word, then replace it with a longer synonym or something, and repeat? That way you get a couple rounds of gameplay per puzzle.

croemer 1y ago

Feels user hostile that there's no retry button. I can delete browser storage but why...

butz 1y ago
Especially for first time players this is absolutely worst experience. Combined with "game knows better", where even valid choice is incorrect, makes this game not fun.
- onion92 1y ago
  Hi, there was a bug today for Australian players that was fixed now. Maybe this is your case. What word is ok and not recognized by the game? We can check and include it.

onion92 1y ago

Hi everyone, I am glad that people are enjoying playing Shrinkle. I appreciate all your feedback and I am working to improve the experience. Thanks

CMay 1y ago

Would it be possible to have 3-4 words and you have to make sure that each word you produce results in a valid phrase? So not only the final phrase makes sense, but you have to navigate through a path of valid phrases. This way you might remove a letter from different words and have to think ahead to decide if the result would remain coherent in order to avoid an error. The computational complexity of identifying phrases that can be reduced like this while having a coherent path might increase rapidly.

svarrall 1y ago

My only confusion was when I’d correctly reduced one word to the required for the phrase, but didn’t get any feedback that it was correct. I didn’t understand why it wouldn’t accept my “valid” shorter word

windowshopping 1y ago

I find it very funny that somebody domain parked shrinkle.com and thinks they can get $6695 for it.

xdfgh1112 1y ago

It is unsatisfying to find a removal that leads to a valid word but be told it's "wrong".

ckrapu 1y ago

I love the idea but when I tried to reduce "SCARFS" to "CAR" (the right answer) it rejected my choice of S, but let me select the other letters. Looks like a bug. Clean it up and I would love to play more!

onion92 1y ago
There was a bug for Australian players that is fixed now! Thank you!

neogodless 1y ago

Is it broken today? Seems like getting to the "solution" isn't working for anyone... even if you get 3 errors it just doesn't tell you the correct answer.

onion92 1y ago
There was a bug that is fixed now. Thank you!
- neogodless 1y ago
  Thanks! Today my spouse had a bug that the demo phrase VALLEY SCENT loaded for the puzzle of the day, and was not able to solve to the actual phrase it was looking for.