5 ms·

Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak

81 points by qrush 5mo ago

Hi HN! Looking for feedback on this 1v1 and daily word dueling game I've built over the last few months. Play here: https://wordtrak.com/ https://wordtrak.com/ Or on iOS here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordtrak/id6760442363 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordtrak/id6760442363 (Android version soon!)

fred_is_fred 5mo ago
I don't know if it's my adblockers but your page loads an insanely large picture of your face and then people playing scrabble. Like I have to scroll two directions to see the whole picture large...
- qrush 5mo ago
  Oops - my son's face is large though! I'm not seeing it on my devices or Chrome/Safari...
RNanoware 5mo ago
Wonderful example of using AI thoughtfully as a creativity multiplier, rather than diluting the artistry of the end result. I love the human elements you scattered throughout the game: your children's initials in some of the navigation icons is an especially nice touch!
- qrush 5mo ago
  Thank you!!
NickC25 5mo ago
I love this. I'm also building a simple game using Claude, so this is quite inspirational. Keep going!
ludovicianul 5mo ago
I've built a simple word game with my kids recently. It's fun to add stuff quickly even if they are used only by the family. It has only 5 players now and they have their own group, the family, but open to anyone if interested.
jimnotgym 5mo ago
One problem for me, apart from sucking at word games... I started with a load of vowels in my hand, just two consonants. I found a 3 letter word OK, but got a consonant and vowel back. I traded two vowels and got two more back. Couldn't make a 4 letter word, game over. I suppose the difference in scrabble is that if I had passed, someone else may have put a consonant down that I could use...
- qrush 5mo ago
  Yeah sometimes the draws are tough, and especially without a shared board. I've addressed this by adding more tiles than scrabble to the bag (I'll be doing a followup post about dictionaries, tile distributions, point testing, and more), but definitely not done tuning this yet. Would welcome ideas on how to smooth this out!
oezi 5mo ago
406 browser not supported (opera mobile). Come on...
- jmkd 5mo ago
  Same on old Chrome desktop (116)
roxana_haidiner 5mo ago
Looks really good, are you in the first photo? How old are you? Good luck for your future projects!
vessenes 5mo ago
Are opponents autopets-style opponents (e.g. recorded and replayed so you don’t have to wait?) I’m confused about a lot of things about the game; I guess most particularly the letter draws — do I and my opponents get the exact same sequence of letters when traded in? Do we draw from the same (replaceable? Non-replaceable?) bag? When I went to sudden death I saw very different words — in my case, I drew a J — was that it, since my foe only used a word with a G, I was basically guaranteed a win. Was that poor word choice on his part, poor or no trading, or a different tile set the foe had? I think it would be nice to see all the possible letters in the ‘bag’ when we’re looking at trading. Finally, is there a time component? It would be nice to get some indications about the opponent - maybe showing where they are hovering / clicking, or a clock countdown. Also - fun!
- qrush 5mo ago
  Great questions, thanks - there is a tutorial! There's a "bag" just like Scrabble and you're both drawing tiles from it. You can see the bag too, definitely should be visible during swapping, great call. CPU players have heuristics and different word difficulties they play - I want to do a new post on that soon. There's no time component... we tried that initially but felt too rushed.
  - chrisco23 5mo ago
    Where is this tutorial? I see nothing on the link nor on wordtrak.com that really explains how to play. I tried to play Daily and I had no idea. I tried dragging tiles onto squares to spell words, no tiles stuck anywhere, gave up.
    - matt_kantor 5mo ago
      > I tried dragging tiles onto squares to spell words, no tiles stuck anywhere, gave up. I think the first move is a forced swap, though from a gameplay design perspective I'm not sure why. It took me a while to figure this out; it should definitely be made more obvious (assuming it's intentional).
frontenderdude 5mo ago
Are you coding 3 clients: - Swift for iOS - Kotlin for Android - TypeScript/React/etc for web
- qrush 5mo ago
  Wrong on all 3 fronts, sorry! It's Rails with vanilla JS/CSS for web. Expo.dev on the native side.
loneboat 5mo ago
My phone's browser picked a heckuva place for the line break in the second sentence: My mom has been regularly beating me at Scrabble since I could spell.
undecisive 5mo ago
As with anything word-gamey involving internet, you will probably have to trim down your dictionary. While I'm very glad my "sxxg" beat their "txxt", the first probably shouldn't be allowed (although there are non-rude definitions) and the second definitely shouldn't have! Still, a very fun game, well made.
- qrush 5mo ago
  I kept (some of) the profanity in, kind of on purpose...because it's hilarious! I did remove some extreme slurs though.
videogreg93 5mo ago
Using claude for game design, art design, and coding. I can see you're even using AI to respond to comments in this thread. At that point this is just a game made by AI. It's one thing to lean on AI to cover our blind spots, but if AI is in all stages of the pipeline I just wonder what the point of all this is? Did you really need to waste money and resources to make a simple word game? Are people really getting to be this lazy already? /rant
- qrush 5mo ago
  I've been using my real human hands and brain to respond to this thread. Woof. Maybe look at it this way: With a full time job and 3 kids at home, I was able to learn a ton about shipping apps with new tools available over the last few months on the side, and also have some fun with my family and friends. I struggle to call that "lazy" or a "waste".
vunderba 5mo ago
This is completely unrelated to your game - but your HN profile description reads: "A short, study creature fond of drink and industry". I'm assuming that's a typo and you intended "sturdy". Just thought this was kind of amusing given that you're obsessed with word games. ** Feedback for the game ** I highly recommend adjusting the color palette. Aside from the letters themselves, everything tends to blur together particularly the square tiles on the black background. When there was a bit of glare on my screen, I could barely see them at all. On a more personal note, I don't think that dark-mode style palettes really fit most word-based games. If you look at games like Scrabble, bananagrams, etc. they remind me of the color scheme from the 1981 arcade game Centipede, borrowing from that same palette of lighter pastel tones.
- qrush 5mo ago
  Fixed (it's a Dwarf Fortress reference)! And yes colors aren't my strong suit...will think about it!
Larrikin 5mo ago
Kotlin Multiplatform is production level at this point. It doesn't really make sense to go with iOS only and then Android maybe later unless you only know iOS development and just plan to make someone else port it.
- qrush 5mo ago
  My main limiting factor was dealing with two app store submissions. I'm already using expo.dev as a cross-platform solution.
aryan_kalra12 5mo ago
Keep up the good work!
bgsesr42 5mo ago
Harder than I expected. pretty cool.
readthenotes1 5mo ago
Firefox browser on Android, tracks don't seem to select. I couldn't figure out how to get letters up there (though they would appear to select if I tapped them)
- qrush 5mo ago
  I’ll check it out on Firefox. I just got an Android around a week ago so haven’t tested it much there yet.
stronglikedan 5mo ago
I suggest a practice mode that allows you to get used to the gameplay without squandering the daily puzzle on that task. I personally just use incognito mode for this, but not everyone is that savvy.
- qrush 5mo ago
  Fair point! You can just play against the CPU and I had that as the default mode when signed out (you can still get to it after the daily game). I’ll think more on this!
soared 5mo ago
Impressive idea and fun execution. Graphics are fun and interesting! I don’t play word games, besides when the wife needs crossword help so I’m not much help with actual gameplay feedback. The UX is a bit wonky in the classic vibe coded way. 1. When clicking send there is no clear indication what’s happened. The trak should visually lock, the send button should animate, etc. 2. After sending a trak, I can select letters - but this is a seemingly pointless state. No trak is selected, so letters don’t go there. Clicking swap resets my tile selection and I need to reselect the letters. 3. Swap phase feels odd - why do I need to confirm my hand? Can’t I just either play, or swap and then play. Otherwise - I’ve found some of my favorite games have a strong sense of satisfaction in small ways. Like number go up, but visual or audio. IE if I manage to fill a trak with all letters, play a nice animation. And for each longer trak, make that animation even more satisfying. (Or something similar - reward me when I get good at the game with something rare and dank that I will crave)
- qrush 5mo ago
  Thanks! And yeah I’m definitely going to work on more polish and animations, this all needs a big pass on fidelity. Really appreciate this feedback.
savorypiano 5mo ago
About how much revenue or how many users do you estimate a game like this will have per month?
- qrush 5mo ago
  One fun thing I learned here is that advertisers won’t even consider a site or game that’s not launched yet…not even Google AdSense would approve me. I am tracking this though and obviously want to make number go up.
  - savorypiano 5mo ago
    One metric I track is what % of users return the next day. I'm trying to bring it up to 10-20% before I assume there will be any revenue. Currently at 5% for my game, which may be due to difficulty. Can I ask what your return % is?
aaomino233 5mo ago
I tried it out briefly, and it's really fun! The tutorial is a bit incomplete, though; it's kind of like learning by doing. Looking forward to the Android version!
parcse 5mo ago
[dead]
UansaS 5mo ago
Interesting game. I suggest including a simple how-to-play animation in the main page, something that visually shows the rules/mechanics. Otherwise, there's going to be some friction for people to get into it. Claude can easily do this for you. I did it for my math game, which at launch I thought was super self explanatory, but even the most clever of my friends, had questions about the gameplay, which was easily answered with a visual cue! Having said that, happy to see others making thoughtful little games with Claude. Good luck.
joshikarthikey 5mo ago
Looks pretty interesting even though I am not that much into word games
anthonycoslett 5mo ago
I love Wordle so I have a feeling this will scratch that itch I have when I'm done with my daily puzzle. Thank you for posting this! <3
- qrush 5mo ago
  Thanks!!! I'd love ideas on sharing the end results...I went a bit overboard with the video recaps but that's not the best for simple text messages.
riptideride 5mo ago
[dead]
nilen 5mo ago
Very fun idea - would be nice with a simple tutorial before jumping in.. i think i screwed up a few attempts because did not quite get the flow initially. but maybe just me!
FrogHire 5mo ago
I struggle with Wordle and have the audacity to try this game. Wish me good luck, lol. It kinda went straight into the game, and I didn't really know how to play it at first. Wish it had clearer guidelines before I manually click on the guide?
kartik_malik 5mo ago
looks cool
lupodevelop 5mo ago
Graphics are fun and interesting. Nice Job.

81 points by qrush 5mo ago

fred_is_fred 5mo ago

I don't know if it's my adblockers but your page loads an insanely large picture of your face and then people playing scrabble. Like I have to scroll two directions to see the whole picture large...

qrush 5mo ago
Oops - my son's face is large though! I'm not seeing it on my devices or Chrome/Safari...

RNanoware 5mo ago

Wonderful example of using AI thoughtfully as a creativity multiplier, rather than diluting the artistry of the end result. I love the human elements you scattered throughout the game: your children's initials in some of the navigation icons is an especially nice touch!

qrush 5mo ago
Thank you!!

NickC25 5mo ago

I love this. I'm also building a simple game using Claude, so this is quite inspirational. Keep going!

ludovicianul 5mo ago

I've built a simple word game with my kids recently. It's fun to add stuff quickly even if they are used only by the family. It has only 5 players now and they have their own group, the family, but open to anyone if interested.

jimnotgym 5mo ago

One problem for me, apart from sucking at word games... I started with a load of vowels in my hand, just two consonants. I found a 3 letter word OK, but got a consonant and vowel back. I traded two vowels and got two more back. Couldn't make a 4 letter word, game over. I suppose the difference in scrabble is that if I had passed, someone else may have put a consonant down that I could use...

qrush 5mo ago
Yeah sometimes the draws are tough, and especially without a shared board. I've addressed this by adding more tiles than scrabble to the bag (I'll be doing a followup post about dictionaries, tile distributions, point testing, and more), but definitely not done tuning this yet. Would welcome ideas on how to smooth this out!

oezi 5mo ago

406 browser not supported (opera mobile). Come on...

jmkd 5mo ago
Same on old Chrome desktop (116)

roxana_haidiner 5mo ago

Looks really good, are you in the first photo? How old are you? Good luck for your future projects!

vessenes 5mo ago

Are opponents autopets-style opponents (e.g. recorded and replayed so you don’t have to wait?) I’m confused about a lot of things about the game; I guess most particularly the letter draws — do I and my opponents get the exact same sequence of letters when traded in? Do we draw from the same (replaceable? Non-replaceable?) bag? When I went to sudden death I saw very different words — in my case, I drew a J — was that it, since my foe only used a word with a G, I was basically guaranteed a win. Was that poor word choice on his part, poor or no trading, or a different tile set the foe had? I think it would be nice to see all the possible letters in the ‘bag’ when we’re looking at trading. Finally, is there a time component? It would be nice to get some indications about the opponent - maybe showing where they are hovering / clicking, or a clock countdown. Also - fun!

qrush 5mo ago
Great questions, thanks - there is a tutorial! There's a "bag" just like Scrabble and you're both drawing tiles from it. You can see the bag too, definitely should be visible during swapping, great call. CPU players have heuristics and different word difficulties they play - I want to do a new post on that soon. There's no time component... we tried that initially but felt too rushed.
- chrisco23 5mo ago
  Where is this tutorial? I see nothing on the link nor on wordtrak.com that really explains how to play. I tried to play Daily and I had no idea. I tried dragging tiles onto squares to spell words, no tiles stuck anywhere, gave up.
  - matt_kantor 5mo ago
    > I tried dragging tiles onto squares to spell words, no tiles stuck anywhere, gave up. I think the first move is a forced swap, though from a gameplay design perspective I'm not sure why. It took me a while to figure this out; it should definitely be made more obvious (assuming it's intentional).

frontenderdude 5mo ago

Are you coding 3 clients: - Swift for iOS - Kotlin for Android - TypeScript/React/etc for web

qrush 5mo ago
Wrong on all 3 fronts, sorry! It's Rails with vanilla JS/CSS for web. Expo.dev on the native side.

loneboat 5mo ago

My phone's browser picked a heckuva place for the line break in the second sentence: My mom has been regularly beating me at Scrabble since I could spell.

undecisive 5mo ago

As with anything word-gamey involving internet, you will probably have to trim down your dictionary. While I'm very glad my "sxxg" beat their "txxt", the first probably shouldn't be allowed (although there are non-rude definitions) and the second definitely shouldn't have! Still, a very fun game, well made.

qrush 5mo ago
I kept (some of) the profanity in, kind of on purpose...because it's hilarious! I did remove some extreme slurs though.

videogreg93 5mo ago

Using claude for game design, art design, and coding. I can see you're even using AI to respond to comments in this thread. At that point this is just a game made by AI. It's one thing to lean on AI to cover our blind spots, but if AI is in all stages of the pipeline I just wonder what the point of all this is? Did you really need to waste money and resources to make a simple word game? Are people really getting to be this lazy already? /rant

qrush 5mo ago
I've been using my real human hands and brain to respond to this thread. Woof. Maybe look at it this way: With a full time job and 3 kids at home, I was able to learn a ton about shipping apps with new tools available over the last few months on the side, and also have some fun with my family and friends. I struggle to call that "lazy" or a "waste".

vunderba 5mo ago

This is completely unrelated to your game - but your HN profile description reads: "A short, study creature fond of drink and industry". I'm assuming that's a typo and you intended "sturdy". Just thought this was kind of amusing given that you're obsessed with word games. ** Feedback for the game ** I highly recommend adjusting the color palette. Aside from the letters themselves, everything tends to blur together particularly the square tiles on the black background. When there was a bit of glare on my screen, I could barely see them at all. On a more personal note, I don't think that dark-mode style palettes really fit most word-based games. If you look at games like Scrabble, bananagrams, etc. they remind me of the color scheme from the 1981 arcade game Centipede, borrowing from that same palette of lighter pastel tones.

qrush 5mo ago
Fixed (it's a Dwarf Fortress reference)! And yes colors aren't my strong suit...will think about it!

Larrikin 5mo ago

Kotlin Multiplatform is production level at this point. It doesn't really make sense to go with iOS only and then Android maybe later unless you only know iOS development and just plan to make someone else port it.

qrush 5mo ago
My main limiting factor was dealing with two app store submissions. I'm already using expo.dev as a cross-platform solution.

aryan_kalra12 5mo ago

Keep up the good work!

bgsesr42 5mo ago

Harder than I expected. pretty cool.

readthenotes1 5mo ago

Firefox browser on Android, tracks don't seem to select. I couldn't figure out how to get letters up there (though they would appear to select if I tapped them)

qrush 5mo ago
I’ll check it out on Firefox. I just got an Android around a week ago so haven’t tested it much there yet.

stronglikedan 5mo ago

I suggest a practice mode that allows you to get used to the gameplay without squandering the daily puzzle on that task. I personally just use incognito mode for this, but not everyone is that savvy.

qrush 5mo ago
Fair point! You can just play against the CPU and I had that as the default mode when signed out (you can still get to it after the daily game). I’ll think more on this!

soared 5mo ago

Impressive idea and fun execution. Graphics are fun and interesting! I don’t play word games, besides when the wife needs crossword help so I’m not much help with actual gameplay feedback. The UX is a bit wonky in the classic vibe coded way. 1. When clicking send there is no clear indication what’s happened. The trak should visually lock, the send button should animate, etc. 2. After sending a trak, I can select letters - but this is a seemingly pointless state. No trak is selected, so letters don’t go there. Clicking swap resets my tile selection and I need to reselect the letters. 3. Swap phase feels odd - why do I need to confirm my hand? Can’t I just either play, or swap and then play. Otherwise - I’ve found some of my favorite games have a strong sense of satisfaction in small ways. Like number go up, but visual or audio. IE if I manage to fill a trak with all letters, play a nice animation. And for each longer trak, make that animation even more satisfying. (Or something similar - reward me when I get good at the game with something rare and dank that I will crave)

qrush 5mo ago
Thanks! And yeah I’m definitely going to work on more polish and animations, this all needs a big pass on fidelity. Really appreciate this feedback.

savorypiano 5mo ago

About how much revenue or how many users do you estimate a game like this will have per month?

qrush 5mo ago
One fun thing I learned here is that advertisers won’t even consider a site or game that’s not launched yet…not even Google AdSense would approve me. I am tracking this though and obviously want to make number go up.
- savorypiano 5mo ago
  One metric I track is what % of users return the next day. I'm trying to bring it up to 10-20% before I assume there will be any revenue. Currently at 5% for my game, which may be due to difficulty. Can I ask what your return % is?

aaomino233 5mo ago

I tried it out briefly, and it's really fun! The tutorial is a bit incomplete, though; it's kind of like learning by doing. Looking forward to the Android version!

parcse 5mo ago

[dead]

UansaS 5mo ago

Interesting game. I suggest including a simple how-to-play animation in the main page, something that visually shows the rules/mechanics. Otherwise, there's going to be some friction for people to get into it. Claude can easily do this for you. I did it for my math game, which at launch I thought was super self explanatory, but even the most clever of my friends, had questions about the gameplay, which was easily answered with a visual cue! Having said that, happy to see others making thoughtful little games with Claude. Good luck.

joshikarthikey 5mo ago

Looks pretty interesting even though I am not that much into word games

anthonycoslett 5mo ago

I love Wordle so I have a feeling this will scratch that itch I have when I'm done with my daily puzzle. Thank you for posting this! <3

qrush 5mo ago
Thanks!!! I'd love ideas on sharing the end results...I went a bit overboard with the video recaps but that's not the best for simple text messages.

riptideride 5mo ago

[dead]

nilen 5mo ago

Very fun idea - would be nice with a simple tutorial before jumping in.. i think i screwed up a few attempts because did not quite get the flow initially. but maybe just me!

FrogHire 5mo ago

I struggle with Wordle and have the audacity to try this game. Wish me good luck, lol. It kinda went straight into the game, and I didn't really know how to play it at first. Wish it had clearer guidelines before I manually click on the guide?

kartik_malik 5mo ago

looks cool

lupodevelop 5mo ago

Graphics are fun and interesting. Nice Job.