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Show HN: Alphabet Soup, a multiplayer game, build the longest word to win
I've been working on a simple multiplayer word game called Alphabet Soup.
It's a bit like NYT Spelling Bee, except it's multiplayer and only your best (longest) word counts toward your score. So, instead of trying to find as many words as possible, the game is more about finding one unusually good word.
You can play with friends in a private match, or, you can join a public Arena match to play against other players who are online. If no one else is around, you'll be matched with a bot.
The game works well with just 2 players, but, also works with bigger groups since the game isn't turn-based.
Would love to hear any thoughts or questions :)
- brikym 2mo agoAwesome game. This round was quite funny since the other person got an antonym. Me asexually +18 38 lessee +12 31 Noah slays +10 30
- SamBam 2mo agoNice! Needs a chat space to say "gg" at the end. It could even be just a button that does just that, if you're worried about unmoderated chat. Competitive games feel unfinished without it! I was in second place for the first three rounds and then swept to the front on the last round.
- johnchinjew 2mo agoAdding chat is a good idea, thanks for the input. Thanks for checking it out!
- doublerabbit 2mo agoAs well recommend but make it limited chat. A way to salute and say well done does make the experience more fun.
- pavel_lishin 2mo agoPerhaps in the spirit of the game, you can only use a small subset of letters to send messages? :P
- SamBam 2mo agoNice emoji buttons! I think that works well.
- johnchinjew 2mo agoThanks! Thinking of adding a "double tap to like" feature next to allow players to give kudos for clever words.
- brikym 2mo agoOP will probably want to replay events to make it seem real time when there aren't enough people to pair with. So a real time chat might not work.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- trapture 2mo agoA word got denied with the error "Word was already used". I had in fact not used it already, neither had any of the others. That caused me to lose the game, very unsatisfying. (nice game otherwise)
- johnchinjew 2mo agoI think I know what went wrong. Right now, even unscored words are not allowed to be reused. Will post a quick fix. Thanks for the precise bug report!
- magneticnorth 2mo agoThis is a lot of fun! I'm pleased that I was able to defeat "hitler1488", but you may want to add some content filtering for the name choosing step.
- johnchinjew 2mo agoGood idea. And thanks for checking it out!
- zatkin 2mo agoI'm the horrible kind of person to go off and use an AI-assisted cheat that can be pasted into the console. Very fun game, nonetheless!
- pavel_lishin 2mo agoHow does that work? I _did_ consider the fact that I could probably use a regex against /usr/share/dict...
- SamBam 2mo agoWhy? Why bother not using your brain (and so therefore not actually "playing") and ruining it for the people you're playing against?
- doublerabbit 2mo agoGentle and fun. Reminds me of isketch back in the days of flash. I look forward to playing this with my mother.
- johnchinjew 2mo agoThanks for checking it out!
- decimalenough 2mo agoIdea: it would be more interesting/competitive if you could immediately see others' submissions, and if those words were then "taken" and can't be reused. Currently you're just kind of twiddling your thumbs after you submit and run out of ideas. It was also not immediately obvious to me that you can submit multiple words, so I was wasting time entering and deleting attempts before finally submitting the best one. Finally, instead of fixed timers between rounds, you might want to have a "Ready!" or "Go!" button.
- johnchinjew 2mo agoReally great points, thanks for commenting. One nuance: if you show others' submissions right away, the game turns into a "race" where speed matters a lot more. That could be fun too (a different game mode?). I might think about showing something like "Opponent X found A _ _ _ _" or "Opponent X found a 5 letter word".
- OisinMoran 2mo agoSuper fun, thanks for sharing! Might be handy to explain the rules up top (can't seem to see them): - Proper nouns allowed - Can reuse letters - Longest word possible might not use all the letters
- johnchinjew 2mo agoThanks for playing! Yeah you're right, rules need to be spelled out a bit better.
- ttd 2mo agoThis is great! No need to require a button click in between rounds IMO. Just start the timer.
- scronkfinkle 2mo agoFun game. Would be nice if there was a single player mode that simply prints the letters and at the end shows the longest word that was missed. That way you can play it offline and place a phone in the center of the table and people can play around it with pen and paper or by just thinking of the word and everyone announces at the end.
- johnchinjew 2mo agoThanks for checking it out! A single-player/offline mode does sound fun too. I do think I will end up adding support for a number of variations and modes.
- Funtownarcade 2mo agoNice. I didn't know you could reuse the same letter! How are you handling the multiplayer framework?
- johnchinjew 2mo agoI'm using Phoenix LiveView + PubSub to keep everyone's browser in sync.
- pbh101 2mo agoI like it! UX feedback: I don’t understand when a round ends. Surprised by it each time.
- johnchinjew 2mo agoThere's a timer at the top! Perhaps a warning SFX and and some animation is in order. Thanks for the feedback.
- pbh101 2mo agoSomething stops my r pound way before the timer concludes.
- johnchinjew 2mo agoCould it be that your device's clock is skewed?
- pbh101 2mo agoProbably was that. Looks fixed after I reset it.
- antonbezr 2mo ago[dead]
- johnchinjew 2mo agoSorry folks, something broke! Looking into it and will post here with updates. UPDATE #2: Seeing full recovery now (Aug 9, 10 PM PST). UPDATE #1: Looks like Railway is having problems - https://status.railway.com/incident/RL8FRJE6 https://status.railway.com/incident/RL8FRJE6
- ethannam9022 2mo agoThis seems like a fun way to practice English vocabulary. One thing confused me, though — I thought the goal was to make the longest word using all of the given letters, but it looks like you can also compete with words that don’t use every letter. Is that intentional?
- johnchinjew 2mo agoYes, it's intentional to allow words that don't use all the letters. It can be very tricky to think of a panagram every time (word that has all 7 letters used at least once). Hence, we don't require every submission to be a panagram. I'll work on making the instructions clearer! There is a bit of an interesting related sharp edge here. Sometimes the longest word for a given set of letters actually does NOT use all the letters! I've thought of a number of approaches to address this tension, but, opted to keep scoring dead simple in the end. I may experiment in the future on this topic though.
- johnchinjew 2mo agoI'd also like to expand it to work with other alphabetic languages too.
- vunderba 2mo agoNice job. But wouldn't accept tnetennba [1]. :) Seriously though reminds me of the game "Countdown" in the series IT Crowd where they compete to find the longest word in a random assortment of vowels and consonants. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9ixvD0_CmM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9ixvD0_CmM
- zvr 2mo agoCountdown is an actual UK game show, on air since 1982 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_(game_show) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_(game_show). It was originally a French game show (Des chiffres et des lettres), it has been adapted in many countries, and in the UK has spawn off the comedy show "8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown".
- kunaaldhawan1 2mo agoVery interesting concept! I was a bit confused with the rules though so if there was a 3-4 point list of instructions in the beginning it would be helpful.
- johnchinjew 2mo agoThanks for checking it out. I've added a proper "How to play?" section now. Thanks for the feedback!
- zvr 2mo agoSimple and easy to play. I usually play the Countdown variant, where a letter cannot be re-used. But it starts with 9 letters and one can have multiple instances of the same letter in the starting set. It would be fun if you could implement this, as well. An initial switch might determine what rules are in effect.
- recursive-call 2mo agoI’m assuming the (duck emoji) is the bot for when no one else in the lobby? Glad you included that. However, I’m not sure why “niggas” is one of the words it uses… Moderating users is one thing but I would hope at least the bot could be inoffensive…
- johnchinjew 2mo agoSorry. Fixed that now!
- justoneletter 2mo agowhat wordlists/ dictionaries did you use? Worth filtering out slurs/ vulgar etc if you haven't
- pavel_lishin 2mo agoHow is "Fillmore" a word, but "filmer" isn't? Similarly, so is Levitt, and apparently Illinois.
- johnchinjew 2mo agoGood point, I've removed all the proper nouns now.
- EditArteSoy 2mo agoGood
- johnchinjew 2mo agoHey all! I've added a number of features this past week. Tell me what you think. 1. You can now react with emojis at the end of every round. 2. Someone found a great word? You can now double-tap to give them a like. 3. You can now see the first letter of the "word to beat" in real time. Other improvements: Added a more detailed "How to play?". Addressed the profanity issues. Improved the word list quality. Fixed unexpected "Word already used" errors.