Show HN: Flappy Bird and Wordle (flappybirdle.com)
Hey HN!
FlappyBirdle combines elements from the game Flappy Bird and the popular word game Wordle. I wanted to see if I could make a game that added urgency to Wordle, while also feeling outragous at the same time. I think I achieved it with FlappyBirdle. Every time you type a letter of the word, the bird flaps its wings and you get closer to the goal. It also has an easy mode that ignores the pipes, so even beginners can get a good score. Let me know if you have any ideas on how I can make it better!
95 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadCool your beans. Relax.
Maybe turn it into a typing game where you simply keep the bird from falling into the ground.
I wish there some more satisfying feedback when you get a word right
In a horrible way I love this so much. It’s like Chessboxing if you were to play both simultaneously. There’s such a mismatch between what you need from your brain with this.
That's basically Starcraft for me, which I guess is why I stopped playing it.
This should become a new genre of game, with the level of discomfort the optimization criteria.
There should exist games that make you feel bad as you play them, yet somehow still compel the player to continue.
It would be an art form.
You can’t ever do well. You just do badly as slowly as possible.
Papers Please is actually fun to sit next to someone and play together, though
I suspect this genre could only exist in today's streaming/screencasting world. These are games you don't exactly want to play, you just want to watch someone else play.
Also I think the game defaults to easy mode when you open it for the first time, but the switch does not indicate this properly. I think it's bc line 72 isn't supposed to make the equality check to "true", since it can only ever take bool values anyways.
That was horrible, thanks!
There are two problems: the first is that you absolutely can beat this game way faster than Wordle as it relaxes a key limitation of Wordle. Let's say you play "ETRAO" as your first word. Already that's easy easier than Wordle, as you can just type stuff for that first word and gain way more information than otherwise you should be able to.
(Now, that isn't the best distribution for five letters but like, the point is whatever that is is now just a collection of random letters. Someone figured out the best five letter real word starting word, but I have since forgotten it as it has been a long time since I cared; however, whatever it was, if you don't need to actually have it be a word you can do way better, as you can also scramble the order of the word to put the letters in the best positions to learn the most, and this all happens before you start playing the game.)
Now for some later word let's say you really just want to know if A goes somewhere... with Wordle you have to guess an actual word, which means you have to 1) figure out a word that matches the constraints you are trying to optimize and 2) doesn't waste much of your guess by reusing stuff you already know.
In actual Wordle that's essentially most of the challenge: "is there a word I can come up with that simultaneously checks on that A but also uses this Z and this Q I have left over, preferably without using U because I have nothing to learn from U anymore?" It stresses your vocabulary in addition to stressing your logic ability. In this game you just type the Z and the Q and move on with your life as vocabulary only matters for a real guess.
The other problem with this relaxed ruleset is it kind of undermines the real challenge of having to simultaneously play Flappy Bird: you are sitting there in a panic trying to figure out a word you can play and... you know? screw it: just relax and play that Q you think might be relevant and don't waste your brain power coming up with a word right now as you don't need a word.
What I mean is, of course wordle-with-unconstrained-guesses is easier than wordle. But flappy birdle isn't just that, it also has a timing element.
So for any solution word, there may be a good series of letter strings you can guess to reach the solution quickly. But the best way to progress through that series is to adjust each guess in response to the information revealed by the previous guess.
In flappy birdle, if you guess letter strings quickly to fly the bird, the tradeoff is that you can't put as much thought into adjusting those guesses based on the previous guesses. So there is still a challenge, even though the constraint on the guess strings is relaxed. The goal isn't just to solve the word, it's to solve the word and pilot the bird.