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Show HN: A Daily Bible Game (bibdle.com)

49 points by egglemonsoup ↗ HN
I created a daily game where you get a random Bible verse and try to identify the book (e.g. "Psalms", "Genesis", "Luke") in as few guesses as possible.

I have absolutely no clue how I got the idea, other than the fact that I grew up in the Orthodox Church and all my other coding projects have been faith-related (a terrible mobile app (1) and slightly broken Byzantine chant website (2) ). I'm a relatively new developer and I've been hungry for a project to build that people will actually use and share around, so I hoped this would fit the bill.

Sure enough, friends and family have been making it part of their daily routine. When priests AND my nonreligious college friends started sending me their results every day, I knew I had something. It was really exciting.

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When the idea popped into my head, I started working on it right away. I created the project at 1AM and had a MVP/SLC version done a few hours later. That was a few weeks ago.

I am using SvelteKit, no external APIs, and SQLite for the database. It's hosted on an Ubuntu machine in my living room. Coding agents like Roo/Kilo Code assisted heavily in the development, but after I had already decided on the overall architecture and how I wanted things to work together.

The game is free, has no signup, and I’m not running any ads. I’m looking for any and all feedback, and especially suggestions for how I can make the game more interesting, fun, and/or educational.

Thank you HN!

17 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 32.1 ms ] thread
ktg0215
Nice niche! The daily puzzle format has proven to work well for specific communities. I imagine this could build a pretty dedicated user base among Bible study groups. Simple concept, clear target audience.
gampleman
Since you're from an Orthodox background, perhaps you can consider having the books from an actual Orthodox bible? For instance it is missing Wisdom of Solomon, Sirrah and others.

Edit: I'd also appreciate an RSS feed so that I can get notified when a new puzzle is released.

gampleman
Cool project! I'd be interested in checking out your other projects, but the links seem not to be included in your post.
scottndecker
I can only do a verse every 15 hours? Why the rate limit?
olalonde
Stupid question but is it common for Christians to be able to identify which book a Bible verse belongs to? I assume you'd have to have read the Bible multiple times to be able to play this, right?
gwd
Nice! Might be nice to have a bit more of a visual indication that you'll get the Wordle-style "match"; also, for things like the Minor Prophets where there are quite a few and people aren't super familiar with them, might be nice to have something else (like "starts with M" or something, so that you can get Micah -> Malachi, rather than cycling through them all).

Also let me plug the system I'm developing which helps you learn Biblical Greek, by reading selections of scripture where you know all the words but one or two. Each one takes about the effort of a Wordle (or Bibdle) puzzle to decode. https://www.laleolanguage.com

viggity
Nice work! Out of curiosity, how are you deciding what the verse of the day is? i.e. is randomness weighted somehow? There are are ~31k verses in the bible, 23k in old testament, 8k in new testament. Is it 2.5 times more likely to be an old testament verse? Or, perhaps you're picking a testament at random, then a random book, then a random verse. Lots of ways to skin the proverbial cat.
publicdebates
This is too difficult:

    Do not trust in a friend;
      Do not put your confidence in a companion;
    Guard the doors of your mouth
      From her who lies in your bosom.
    For son dishonors father,
      Daughter rises against her mother,
    Daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
      A man’s enemies are the men of his own household.
    Therefore I will look to the Lord;
      I will wait for the God of my salvation;
        My God will hear me.
Tried [redacted] and [redacted] first, turns out to be [redacted]. I would literally never have guessed that. It genuinely could have been from any [redacted] book at that point. Maybe if I could just give up with a button.

Also yeah it's weird that I have to wait a day to do the next one. I get the appeal of having a daily routine fun site, but why not also let me do a random one each time I pass/fail if I want?

barbazoo
> Do not trust in a friend; Do not put your confidence in a companion; Guard the doors of your mouth From her who lies in your bosom. For son dishonors father, Daughter rises against her mother, Daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; A man’s enemies are the men of his own household. Therefore I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; My God will hear me.

Yikes, got a fun one right away. That seems like rather unhealthy behavior to me. Maybe not really for the younger ones then.

trumbitta2
So, having religion on the front page means politics are now allowed on HN, too. Right?
YY4398427
Tangentially related, but is there a good open source ePub of the versions of the Bible? Standard eBooks doesn't have the Bible in their library, bizarrely.
higgins
protestant bible? catholic? orthodox?
vunderba
“Guess the Book” is also a game concept (itself related to matching a quote to its author) that can be easily adapted to secular works as well. You could do this with something like “Guess the Passage by Shakespeare Play.”

Now get thee to a nunnery.

TimTheTinker
This being flagged (presumably because it's "religious"?) seems incredibly short-sighted. Like flagging a "guess the US president" as being too political.
gampleman
Are the verses random? If so perhaps add a filter to make sure the name of the book doesn't occur in the verse. For instance today's is trivial (or if it has "Job replied...", or "Jonah went..." it would make it too easy).

(Unless the name is John. Then it's kind of a good clue that the book isn't John).