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Show HN: Domino Fit – Domino Tiling Puzzle (dominofit.isotropic.us)

197 points by macromaniac ↗ HN
Domino fit is a domino tiling puzzler I spent a lot of time both making and playing. Its like sudoku but with a geometric angle, the sum of the dots must match the row and column numbers.

It's running on Betsy, the server under my couch, and was made with typescript. I'm proud of it.

I hope you give it a shot, and appreciate any thoughts or criticisms!

75 comments

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anotheryou
Fun game!

But please change the tutorial example to something where the dots don't align with each other on the dominos (this is obviously not required, but part of the usual domino game and therefore it's easy to make that wrong assumption here)

It would also be nice to see how the domino will be dropped, I often put it down off by one square. Maybe a faint outline under the cursor, or even snapped to the grid.

macromaniac
TYVM! Ok, fixed up the tutorial. The domino shadow is a good suggestion, hope I can put it in before the wife gets back from her trip
ilikehurdles
A little intimidating at first but eventually all the pieces fit into place. I feel like the challenge is in finding early on the rows/columns that can only be one exact combination of pieces and then building from there. Also looking for odd numbers means there must be a 1-piece in that alignment.
TheJoeMan
This is fun! The exact type of game my wife loves. Agree on the other comment about misclicking off-by-one placement errors on a phone touchscreen.

Small feedback, the “copy” button doesnt seem to work on iOS Safari. Otherwise would be a good rip of the wordle emoji share ability.

hexomancer
That was very fun! Are the puzzles handmade or procedurally generated?
macromaniac
Yey these comments are making me smile.

A bit of both, made a generator that spits out games and then I played 10 procedurally generated levels and picked the ones I liked.

In general my favorite levels are the 7x7 with 5 stones, you can legit logic them out if you are patient. I only put in one since it takes quite a bit of practice to get to that point.

codingdave
You should be smiling - this is really a decent puzzle game. And the last level did take a couple tries before I got it, but that was great. The earlier levels were too quick and easy once you figured out a couple patterns to look for.

Everyone is correct that this needs a better intro and better overall UX. But the concept is solid enough that I think this idea could go somewhere. Well done.

transportgo
Ar first I didn’t understand that you couldn’t rotate. Would love to have “R” reset the board.
cperciva
Yep, I got stuck for 10 minutes on the first level because I didn't realize the pieces couldn't rotate. It's much easier to solve once you know about that constraint!
gus_massa
Sometimes my mind wanders until I decide I want a "01" and I tap on the "01" tile at the bottom to select it. If the "01" is alredy selected, it switchs to the "02". But I tapped the "01" to select the "01" in spite it's already selected! (I have the same problem with the "02".)

My recomendation is to change the logic of the selection at the bottom. Instead of switching each time, I'd like that if I tap on the left bottom I select the "01", and if I tap on the right bottom I select the "02".

SamBam
Yes, it was a fun game but that was my only minor criticism. I did that all the time. I came to make the same suggestion: the domino's at the bottom should only select that domino, not toggle between the two.
macromaniac
I will try to fix this, sounds frustrating. Most likely I will change the default to what yall suggest and keep the way it works now as a settings option just for me because my muscle memory can't handle the change ha.
silviot
Excellent game. Excellent attitude towards feedback. Keep up with the good stuff!
gus_massa
Just in case: Nice game!

I played the new set today, and I think the balance between the 01 and 02 is very good and make the puzzles very interesting.

chrispine
Looking forward to this change! I am constantly switching to the wrong piece by clicking on the piece I want when it's already selected.

Another thing that would help me is if it showed a ghosted image of where the piece will be before I place it (like Starcraft, Age of Empires, and a million other games do). If you had that, I would never place the wrong piece accidentally, or accidentally in the wrong place.

Great game, really fun!

tcmb
I really enjoyed playing it, seems to hit the right sweet spot of difficulty. The earlier puzzles (1-4) seemed a bit easy at first, but not so easy to deter me from continuing. With #5 I needed a bit of back and forth, but not frustratingly much.

Also I really like the graphics and sound, it's pleasant to look at and to listen to, which is important for a puzzle game imo.

pimlottc
Please change the red/green colors on the row numbers, it's difficult for colorblind people. I didn't even realize it was changing colors from green to red when I had too many dots.

In general, though, a fun game and looks very polished!

macromaniac
Tyvm :D. There should be a colorblind mode in the settings (hotkey combo is szs). There's a kid I want to show the game to but he's colorblind too.
laurentlb
The colorblind mode is just using blue instead of green.

While it might work for some people, I'd suggest to redesign. Don't convey information with color alone. For example, you could switch the boldness, circle the number, or something else. The goal is to make it playable even if my goal setting is set to grayscale mode.

Once you do this, you may be able to get rid of the colorblind setting.

laurentlb
Alternative suggestion: instead of showing the target number, show instead the difference between the current sum and the target.

So 0 would tell me the line is complete. A negative number would show there's an error and I need to remove a piece.

milemi
Great game, enjoyed it a lot!
recursive
Love it. I'd appreciate an endless mode that's not clock gated.
frogpelt
Cool game! Curious, why are there numbers on both sides?
_fw
This is great! I was hooked after the first game. I’m glad these are a challenge, but not mind-bendingly difficult.

Thanks for making and sharing, I love it.

z5h
Love it out of the gate.
toutenrab
Really nice, thanks for the discovery and the work behind it!
noduerme
Really fun and clever. The N64 Mario font is a nice touch ;)
lxe
Very satisfying! And definitely unlike any other puzzle I've seen. Nicely done.

Edit: just finished the set. This is wordle-level addicting at this point. Different strategies to think of, and insanely satisfying endgame.

gbdubs
This was really good, really intuitive design, the sound added a ton to the experience, thanks for building and sharing!
darajava
I can’t get over how smooth and satisfying it is, not to mention how fun the game itself is! Very well built, I really enjoyed playing it!

I think there would be more chance of it going viral if there was one difficult level per day, rather than 5 increasing in difficulty.

thatguysaguy
I think it'd be nice to have some harder puzzles, it seems a bit too straightforward once you figure out the tactics ATM.
pmontra
I passed the first level right now. The game is OK but there are a couple of things that confused me.

The small example at the home page didn't prepare me to play the level. I had to place many pieces on the board before I realized that the sum of the number of dots must match the number on the rows and columns. The example didn't lead me to that.

Aken
This was fun! Thanks for sharing
city41
It really reminds me of picross, which is a good thing.