The biggest problem for me is the dictionary - it seems very biased towards US English, so for instance I lost one game when my base was defended with "soiree" which apparently isn't in the dictionary, another one when I was defending the middle of the board with "knives" and wanted the s elsewhere, so swapped it for a d to make "knived" and immediately lost the next round because only "knifed" is in your dictionary, even though both are correct in British English. There's a whole load of annoying 2 and 3 character words that the computer uses that I've never heard of, but a couple of the more normal ones weren't accepted. A few other people have suggested colouring the words based on whether they're in the dictionary, which may help some of the cases, but doesn't help when you're trying to build up to a word and then discover it's not in your dictionary.
I personally disliked the "weakest link" rule, because there were just so many rules, I'd forgotten this one, and fell afoul of it a couple of times, before I went back and checked the rules again. I can see that maybe I'd like it in the future as when the board is fullish, it forces you to weaken your position, but for the longest time in one game I had a long word across the centre of the board, completely trapping the computer in less than half the grid, but it escaped when I made a 2-letter word off that and he immediately destroyed my entire defence with a 4-letter word. So, it might make the game more fun, but intuitively the longest word should be used for defence.
In the end stages of the game, the computer often played really stupid choices. Instead of playing a dummy letter somewhere out of the way, it often stuck it on the end of a word next to my tiles, forced a battle and then lost because it wasn't a word. Maybe that's a strategy to clear out bad tiles, but a couple of times it completely destroyed its defences by doing that.
On some of the grids, I think it'd be possible to get to the computer's dock and not their town, which I guess should be a win condition as they would then have no valid move. I certainly got it so the computer lost all its tiles, but then didn't want to try that out for fear of messing everything up when I was only 1 square away from the town (and the dock was past it).
I'd kind of like an undo button. A couple of times, I misclicked somewhere, and once I'd accidentally clicked on one tile when deciding on a swap, and then decided to do a different swap and it completely trashed my board instead. That and the potential for instant loss of a a good board position and letter choices if you play a word that's not in the dictionary, would make this a useful feature.
The letter distribution might be better if it's weighted like the scrabble letters. One game I had multiple Q, Z, J and V, but not a single N the whole game.
I think it'd be possible to get to the computer's dock and not their town, which I guess should be a win condition as they would then have no valid move.
Just confirmed that this condition is correctly detected as a win!
Amazing! Thanks for the detailed notes, and the insight.
Dictionary does still need work — especially around some words like soiree which got culled by our dictionary builder. We'll iterate on building it out (without adding "garbage" words
Interesting re: weakest link rule. Agreed that can be unintuitive when learning the game, but it's one of those rules that balances the game well overall. Possibly we just need to be better at explaining it.
Re: the end game — the current computer is just not-very-good, so a future NPC might play better there.
And good things to mull over re: undo buttons / highlighting tiles / letter distribution.
Thanks again for the detailed feedback, really really appreciated
I think the rule was quite well explained - there's a whole page on it, and fairly early on too. I just forgot it as there were so many rules to remember before you start playing.
Comments
I enjoyed this and played for a few hours.
The biggest problem for me is the dictionary - it seems very biased towards US English, so for instance I lost one game when my base was defended with "soiree" which apparently isn't in the dictionary, another one when I was defending the middle of the board with "knives" and wanted the s elsewhere, so swapped it for a d to make "knived" and immediately lost the next round because only "knifed" is in your dictionary, even though both are correct in British English. There's a whole load of annoying 2 and 3 character words that the computer uses that I've never heard of, but a couple of the more normal ones weren't accepted. A few other people have suggested colouring the words based on whether they're in the dictionary, which may help some of the cases, but doesn't help when you're trying to build up to a word and then discover it's not in your dictionary.
I personally disliked the "weakest link" rule, because there were just so many rules, I'd forgotten this one, and fell afoul of it a couple of times, before I went back and checked the rules again. I can see that maybe I'd like it in the future as when the board is fullish, it forces you to weaken your position, but for the longest time in one game I had a long word across the centre of the board, completely trapping the computer in less than half the grid, but it escaped when I made a 2-letter word off that and he immediately destroyed my entire defence with a 4-letter word. So, it might make the game more fun, but intuitively the longest word should be used for defence.
In the end stages of the game, the computer often played really stupid choices. Instead of playing a dummy letter somewhere out of the way, it often stuck it on the end of a word next to my tiles, forced a battle and then lost because it wasn't a word. Maybe that's a strategy to clear out bad tiles, but a couple of times it completely destroyed its defences by doing that.
On some of the grids, I think it'd be possible to get to the computer's dock and not their town, which I guess should be a win condition as they would then have no valid move. I certainly got it so the computer lost all its tiles, but then didn't want to try that out for fear of messing everything up when I was only 1 square away from the town (and the dock was past it).
I'd kind of like an undo button. A couple of times, I misclicked somewhere, and once I'd accidentally clicked on one tile when deciding on a swap, and then decided to do a different swap and it completely trashed my board instead. That and the potential for instant loss of a a good board position and letter choices if you play a word that's not in the dictionary, would make this a useful feature.
The letter distribution might be better if it's weighted like the scrabble letters. One game I had multiple Q, Z, J and V, but not a single N the whole game.
Just confirmed that this condition is correctly detected as a win!
Amazing! Thanks for the detailed notes, and the insight.
Dictionary does still need work — especially around some words like soiree which got culled by our dictionary builder. We'll iterate on building it out (without adding "garbage" words
Interesting re: weakest link rule. Agreed that can be unintuitive when learning the game, but it's one of those rules that balances the game well overall. Possibly we just need to be better at explaining it.
Re: the end game — the current computer is just not-very-good, so a future NPC might play better there.
And good things to mull over re: undo buttons / highlighting tiles / letter distribution.
Thanks again for the detailed feedback, really really appreciated
I think the rule was quite well explained - there's a whole page on it, and fairly early on too. I just forgot it as there were so many rules to remember before you start playing.