Wordsearch (HTML5 game)

[ivan]

This is not Love2D related but, I just released my first HTML5 game and would love to get some feedback:


https://2dengine.com/wordsearch

Classic word search game with a bunch of topics and unique puzzles generated each time. Play in your browser completely free!

[Davidobot]

Spent half an hour or so yesterday evening playing through it! I think it's really polished and I liked the "juice" and the variety of topics. The only comment I have to make is to ask whether it would be possible to make overlapping or close words not match in colour? I think that will just look slightly better.

That can probably be achieved by assigning the colours as you discover words, rather than at the start - just take a cyclic colourmap and pick a point (1/w) * k along, where w is the number of total words and k (0 < k < w) is the count of the word you just discovered.

[ivan]

Hey, thank you so much for taking a look. I'll try to make the recommended changes in the next few days.
And great work on love.js!
I would have used it for this game - but decided to try HTML5 because of the mobile browser support.
Cheers!

[milon]

Fun game, I like! It's got lots of polish - the selection is intelligent, you can highlight words forwards or backwards, sound effect is nice, etc.

Not sure if this is a bug or what, but look at this screenshot. I either found a word not in the list, or else the list isn't fully displaying. I suspect the latter - when I go fullscreen, the word list totally disappears. I think you're not considering the word list itself when calculating display dimensions.

EDIT - Definitely miscalculating display dimensions. My screen is 1280x1024, and that screenshot was taken while maximized. If I shrink the window vertically, the other half of the word list comes into view.

Suggestions:
1. Personally, I really like finding bonus words in a word search - words not on the list, but are legit words nevertheless. The one suggestion I have is to check user selections for all known words rather than just on-list words. (ie, in this example there's POOL, FOIL, MAGLEVS, etc.) But that's a minor thing to me.

2. Combine colors where words overlap, rather than replace.

3. I like a little more fanfare when I find all the words, rather than just immediately loading a new puzzle. Some kind of ta-da sound and a button I click to load the next one, etc.

[ivan]

Thanks for the great feedback, Milon!
I have tried to add the improvements you recommended and yes, the game is much better now.
Thanks so much!

[milon]

Awesome, love it!!

One weird little quirk exists (at least on Firefox on Linux Mint) - when I find all the words, I get a little fanfare thing (hooray!) and the word search disappears. If I tab away and tab back, the word search is visible again under the fanfare dialog. I'm not sure which behavior is the intended one, but I prefer to still see the board after a win. (Not that my preference matters, lol.) But again, it's just a weird little quirk I'm not really worried about.

EDIT - I forgot to say that I really like how the letter generation matches the words to be found, rather than an even distribution of the alphabet or basing it on the most common letters. It makes it more challenging to find the words since I'm not looking for the only Z on the board, for example.

[AlexNillson89]

Really very good game with a nice look. I will even add to the bookmarks to return to play it. I haven't found any bugs yet, if I find something, I'll write it down charmingly

[AlexNillson89]

I found one bug. If you do not fully select a word, then you can mark it all early. For example https://prnt.sc/zz62iw. There is no word titi in the list, only titian. https://prnt.sc/zz6okh

[milon]

I think that's an example of finding an alternate acceptable word. You can't normally select only part of a word (I just tested this) unless it's a real word on it's own. For example, if you're looking for BLIMP you can also select LIMP (it's a real word) and probably also IMP.

I had to look it up, but TITI is a kind of monkey. And a valid word on its own.

[ivan]

Hello. Thank you so much for the feedback, Milon and Alex! Those are some great suggestions that I will try to keep in mind in future updates.
Sorry for the late reply, but I recently did some development on the game which adds a sense of progression:
https://2dengine.com/wordsearch/
New topics are unlocked as you complete each puzzle. Also added a dialog that asks for consent before using local storage.