Within 60 seconds and while distracted I managed to figure out how it worked and win my first round (also clicked right through the text) - but then I failed the second round by running out of moves, so the first may have been a fluke :)
I think the timer can help avoid people who will over-analyze colors, but it definitely also changes the way our brains allow us to play - maybe a compromise could be a "free-play" option with no timer, but keep the timer by default? Or the opposite with the timer as a "challenge" mode? I could see the interest in both- it would be neat to see how few moves I could complete a puzzle in if given infinite time!
Also replying to another comment, I do think it is the right choice to allow multiple plays (you may have changed that in the past 10 minutes since it seems I was able to play twice)
I actually liked that it had both a timer and move limit - helps prevent analysis paralysis. My biggest complaint was that the blue and purple colours seemed very similar.
I'd probably bump it to 90s, at minimum. I moved what I felt was pretty fast through it, and ended up in the high 50s both tries (1 fail while figuring it out, then succeed).
I like knowing the time but I don't like being cut off by it. Just let it count up. Same with the moves. You can say what "par" is to make a goal to achieve, but let people take as long and as many moves as they want. They will pressure themselves to do better.
They don't render in macOS 10.13 (the latest version I can install on my girlfriend's 2009 iMac) either.
I've found that any time I'm using emojis for something substantial, I end up using rendered images for them. Even when the emojis are all supported, they can differ across devices and look like something that wasn't what I was going for. Though kinda defeats the fun of using emojis.
If, like me, you entered the game and found yourself not fully understanding how to play (because you didn't read the example), then found you couldn't play the game again today, just delete the cookie it leaves in your browser of `has_played - 1`. Then you can play again.
Seems a weird choice to only let people play once when it could be easily randomized or solved in multiple ways, unlike Wordle, which seems to have started the one-a-day fad.
I think this is a bug. If the user goes back to the help page in the middle of their first try, they don’t get another try (but they’re supposed to get three tries).
Why do I have to "come back tomorrow" to play a game more than once? What a weird anti-user feature. Have to delete cookies to play a game! What next, be allowed to play one game a day on my xbox?
The actual, not so secret now, secret sauce for wordle is the instant recognizability of its "game outcome" (I don't know what to call the green, yellow and gray emojis). This might do the same by instead of telling everyone all these details about score, publish the final status of the board. I think that would instantly tell someone how far one got etc.
My strategy was simple: Scan the boundaries of the area of cells stemming from the top-left corner cell which are of the same color, and attempt to determine which of the other colors has the highest number of unique cells which have at least one edge in common* with that region.
I skimmed the tutorial and just clicked around my first round, not rly sure what was going on until around the end of the round.
Second round I understood the mechanics but ran out of time, was confused a bit about why I lost before I realized there was a timer.
Finally... Fast Flood No.3
→
⌛ → 51 seconds
▶ → 17 moves
→ 3 tries
- Bug: I refreshed the page on my first try and it told me to “come back tomorrow.”
(I opened it in incognito to proceed.)
- Opinion: Failed three times. Felt terrible that I was limited to three goes. The “You’ve used up your tries” approach that Wordle takes only works because you get the satisfaction of learning what the word is.
- Opinion: Timer is stressful. Personally I’d prefer a relaxed game. Just time how long the person takes, don’t cut it off.
- Idea: Use subtle cross-hatching as well as colours to make the game far nicer to play. If you must stay with emojis, then use more creative square-shaped ones.
- Opinion/Idea: Don’t limit the moves. Just show a goal, and let the player exceed. So count tries, overall time (spent trying on any try) and lowest moves. That way people can share “Fast Flood No. 3 with 14 moves in 4 tries over 6 minutes and 10 seconds.”
- Idea: Draw a subtle border around the cells you control. Makes it easier to search for neighbouring cells, and makes it satisfying as the border eats away at the border.
- Idea: Simplify the explanation to “Make all the squares the same colour, in as few moves and as quickly as possible. There’s a new challenge every day.” The mechanics are simple enough that giving players the goal is enough. They’ll figure out the rest, and actually enjoy the process more than if was all laid out for them.
I like the move limit- it's part of what gives Wordle and its associated games (have you tried Sedordle?) their charm.
One thing I'd definitely like to see would be the ability to see your score and game state once you return to the page. I'm effectively locked out at this point so I can't share my score anymore.
On iPhone SE (the original small one) the "I'm colorblind" checkbox is cut off below the bottom of the screen at 100% zoom, can't scroll to it or pinch-zoom out, so there's no way to know it's even there. I could see and use it when I set page zoom to 75%.
I thought I might have had the system text size set high, but it's at the 2nd-lowest.
Update: I love the colorblind mode! I was already going to suggest a game mode with more visually interesting emojis and you picked some great ones :)
I actually find it much more fun and aesthetic than the default mode. (At least on iOS, the emojis are very nicely designed. Iirc each Android brand has their own emoji design.)
Metacomment: I like your approach of explicitly labelling feedback items as bugs, opinions, or ideas. This allows for quick triaging – as a Show HN’er, I’d love to receive feedback in this format. I’m also going to reuse it for the feedback I give.
100% agreed.
It's already fun, but these changes could make it something special. The "adjacent color matching" concept reminds me of an iOS game I like called "Kami 2".
Can the board be made larger? I found the game was over too quickly and there was little scope for strategic thinking by looking ahead for channels with lots of branches.
Like you say, it's obviously inspired by Flood-It. I should clarify: I had never heard of Flood-It before the Mac OS 9 port ("Assimilate") was posted to HN last month, and I was curious if that posting was what inspired this remake.
> the original (which was apparently made 11 years ago)
I'm not sure what the true original is--I found a still-playable version[1] from 2006, from back in the brief heyday of Web Gadgets and personalized web portals[2].
- I had to considerately speed up my game after realising I was running out of time
- The frenetic pace is not very enjoyable
- I don't see any emojis
- It doesn't feel like a puzzle because of the time constraint, I'd remove the timer and lower the max moves allowed, so that you have to think in advance instead of just scanning for max adjacents color and then iterating colors
109 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadI also did one try, then came back a bit later to try again, but I guess I don’t get to use my other tries because I left, which I didn’t like.
I may end up removing it, just thought it was interesting to get two axis to measure performance: moves and time.
I think the timer can help avoid people who will over-analyze colors, but it definitely also changes the way our brains allow us to play - maybe a compromise could be a "free-play" option with no timer, but keep the timer by default? Or the opposite with the timer as a "challenge" mode? I could see the interest in both- it would be neat to see how few moves I could complete a puzzle in if given infinite time!
Also replying to another comment, I do think it is the right choice to allow multiple plays (you may have changed that in the past 10 minutes since it seems I was able to play twice)
I've found that any time I'm using emojis for something substantial, I end up using rendered images for them. Even when the emojis are all supported, they can differ across devices and look like something that wasn't what I was going for. Though kinda defeats the fun of using emojis.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19482991
You could use diff flags and give it a stratego like appeal.
I enjoy this game very!
Not sure if that took me 19 seconds or 19 seconds remaining.
→
⌛ → 45 seconds
▶ → 16 moves
→ 1 try
Second try, 17 moves: Interesting, lets try again.
Third try, 18 moves: Damn, not what I expected...
→
⌛ → 45 seconds
▶ → 16 moves
→ 3 tries
Seems a weird choice to only let people play once when it could be easily randomized or solved in multiple ways, unlike Wordle, which seems to have started the one-a-day fad.
My strategy was simple: Scan the boundaries of the area of cells stemming from the top-left corner cell which are of the same color, and attempt to determine which of the other colors has the highest number of unique cells which have at least one edge in common* with that region.
* There's room for optimization here.
Is there a better strategy?
Here's my score.
Fast Flood No.3 → ⌛ → 31 seconds ▶ → 17 moves → 2 tries
But then got timed out, so just tried to pick what felt like it would increase surface area the most.
Ie one red touching that is connected to a strip of red Ha s more value than flipping 2 red.
Fast Flood No.3 → ⌛ → 29 seconds ▶ → 15 moves → 1 try
Quite fun! Nicely made.
My (hopefully constructive) feedback:
- Bug: I refreshed the page on my first try and it told me to “come back tomorrow.”
(I opened it in incognito to proceed.)
- Opinion: Failed three times. Felt terrible that I was limited to three goes. The “You’ve used up your tries” approach that Wordle takes only works because you get the satisfaction of learning what the word is.
- Opinion: Timer is stressful. Personally I’d prefer a relaxed game. Just time how long the person takes, don’t cut it off.
- Idea: Use subtle cross-hatching as well as colours to make the game far nicer to play. If you must stay with emojis, then use more creative square-shaped ones.
- Opinion/Idea: Don’t limit the moves. Just show a goal, and let the player exceed. So count tries, overall time (spent trying on any try) and lowest moves. That way people can share “Fast Flood No. 3 with 14 moves in 4 tries over 6 minutes and 10 seconds.”
- Idea: Draw a subtle border around the cells you control. Makes it easier to search for neighbouring cells, and makes it satisfying as the border eats away at the border.
- Idea: Simplify the explanation to “Make all the squares the same colour, in as few moves and as quickly as possible. There’s a new challenge every day.” The mechanics are simple enough that giving players the goal is enough. They’ll figure out the rest, and actually enjoy the process more than if was all laid out for them.
One thing I'd definitely like to see would be the ability to see your score and game state once you return to the page. I'm effectively locked out at this point so I can't share my score anymore.
I thought I might have had the system text size set high, but it's at the 2nd-lowest.
Update: I love the colorblind mode! I was already going to suggest a game mode with more visually interesting emojis and you picked some great ones :)
I actually find it much more fun and aesthetic than the default mode. (At least on iOS, the emojis are very nicely designed. Iirc each Android brand has their own emoji design.)
Fast Flood No.3
→
⌛ → 59 seconds
▶ → 18 moves
→ 1 try
Super fun!!!!
> the original (which was apparently made 11 years ago)
I'm not sure what the true original is--I found a still-playable version[1] from 2006, from back in the brief heyday of Web Gadgets and personalized web portals[2].
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20061112004207/http://www.labpixi...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGoogle#Gadgets
I was looking for logic games and found Flood in Simon Tatham's puzzles collection: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/
I'd suggest adding a link to the shareable clipboard score.
I think color blind mode is way easier and maybe should just be the default or only option.
Nice concept!
- I had to considerately speed up my game after realising I was running out of time - The frenetic pace is not very enjoyable - I don't see any emojis - It doesn't feel like a puzzle because of the time constraint, I'd remove the timer and lower the max moves allowed, so that you have to think in advance instead of just scanning for max adjacents color and then iterating colors