Show HN: I built a new word game, Wordtrak
wordtrak.comHi HN! Looking for feedback on this 1v1 and daily word dueling game I've built over the last few months.
Play here: https://wordtrak.com/
Or on iOS here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordtrak/id6760442363 (Android version soon!)
Are opponents autopets-style opponents (e.g. recorded and replayed so you don’t have to wait?)
I’m confused about a lot of things about the game; I guess most particularly the letter draws — do I and my opponents get the exact same sequence of letters when traded in? Do we draw from the same (replaceable? Non-replaceable?) bag?
When I went to sudden death I saw very different words — in my case, I drew a J — was that it, since my foe only used a word with a G, I was basically guaranteed a win. Was that poor word choice on his part, poor or no trading, or a different tile set the foe had?
I think it would be nice to see all the possible letters in the ‘bag’ when we’re looking at trading.
Finally, is there a time component? It would be nice to get some indications about the opponent - maybe showing where they are hovering / clicking, or a clock countdown.
Also - fun!
Great questions, thanks - there is a tutorial!
There's a "bag" just like Scrabble and you're both drawing tiles from it. You can see the bag too, definitely should be visible during swapping, great call.
CPU players have heuristics and different word difficulties they play - I want to do a new post on that soon.
There's no time component... we tried that initially but felt too rushed.
Where is this tutorial? I see nothing on the link nor on wordtrak.com that really explains how to play. I tried to play Daily and I had no idea. I tried dragging tiles onto squares to spell words, no tiles stuck anywhere, gave up.
> I tried dragging tiles onto squares to spell words, no tiles stuck anywhere, gave up.
I think the first move is a forced swap, though from a gameplay design perspective I'm not sure why. It took me a while to figure this out; it should definitely be made more obvious (assuming it's intentional).
Good callout. My idea here was that you commonly get a garbage hand to start the game, and this helps you build a better first word.
It's the ? button on each game, and on the new game screen. I'll make it more obvious. Also here: http://wordtrak.com/manual
I punted on dragging tiles since it felt janky...considering revisiting though.
There needs to be a practice game mode, or play old games (without sign up).
As it is, I played halfway through the first round, realized I had misunderstood the rules and was stuck, so I gave up. I'm unlikely to come back in 24 hours.
I did read the tutorial, but the swapping/bag mechanism wasn't clear until I used it wrong a few times.
Also the bag icon is unclear. It was only when I got stuck and switches into "click random things" mode that I tried it.
Impressive idea and fun execution. Graphics are fun and interesting! I don’t play word games, besides when the wife needs crossword help so I’m not much help with actual gameplay feedback.
The UX is a bit wonky in the classic vibe coded way.
1. When clicking send there is no clear indication what’s happened. The trak should visually lock, the send button should animate, etc. 2. After sending a trak, I can select letters - but this is a seemingly pointless state. No trak is selected, so letters don’t go there. Clicking swap resets my tile selection and I need to reselect the letters. 3. Swap phase feels odd - why do I need to confirm my hand? Can’t I just either play, or swap and then play.
Otherwise - I’ve found some of my favorite games have a strong sense of satisfaction in small ways. Like number go up, but visual or audio. IE if I manage to fill a trak with all letters, play a nice animation. And for each longer trak, make that animation even more satisfying. (Or something similar - reward me when I get good at the game with something rare and dank that I will crave)
Thanks! And yeah I’m definitely going to work on more polish and animations, this all needs a big pass on fidelity. Really appreciate this feedback.
This is completely unrelated to your game - but your HN profile description reads: "A short, study creature fond of drink and industry". I'm assuming that's a typo and you intended "sturdy".
Just thought this was kind of amusing given that you're obsessed with word games.
** Feedback for the game **
I highly recommend adjusting the color palette. Aside from the letters themselves, everything tends to blur together particularly the square tiles on the black background. When there was a bit of glare on my screen, I could barely see them at all.
On a more personal note, I don't think that dark-mode style palettes really fit most word-based games. If you look at games like Scrabble, bananagrams, etc. they remind me of the color scheme from the 1981 arcade game Centipede, borrowing from that same palette of lighter pastel tones.
Fixed (it's a Dwarf Fortress reference)! And yes colors aren't my strong suit...will think about it!
I suggest a practice mode that allows you to get used to the gameplay without squandering the daily puzzle on that task.
I personally just use incognito mode for this, but not everyone is that savvy.
Fair point! You can just play against the CPU and I had that as the default mode when signed out (you can still get to it after the daily game). I’ll think more on this!
I tried it out briefly, and it's really fun! The tutorial is a bit incomplete, though; it's kind of like learning by doing. Looking forward to the Android version!
I've built a simple word game with my kids recently. It's fun to add stuff quickly even if they are used only by the family. It has only 5 players now and they have their own group, the family, but open to anyone if interested.
My phone's browser picked a heckuva place for the line break in the second sentence:
One problem for me, apart from sucking at word games...
I started with a load of vowels in my hand, just two consonants. I found a 3 letter word OK, but got a consonant and vowel back. I traded two vowels and got two more back. Couldn't make a 4 letter word, game over. I suppose the difference in scrabble is that if I had passed, someone else may have put a consonant down that I could use...
Yeah sometimes the draws are tough, and especially without a shared board. I've addressed this by adding more tiles than scrabble to the bag (I'll be doing a followup post about dictionaries, tile distributions, point testing, and more), but definitely not done tuning this yet. Would welcome ideas on how to smooth this out!
About how much revenue or how many users do you estimate a game like this will have per month?
One fun thing I learned here is that advertisers won’t even consider a site or game that’s not launched yet…not even Google AdSense would approve me. I am tracking this though and obviously want to make number go up.
Are you coding 3 clients: - Swift for iOS - Kotlin for Android - TypeScript/React/etc for web
Wrong on all 3 fronts, sorry! It's Rails with vanilla JS/CSS for web. Expo.dev on the native side.
Wonderful example of using AI thoughtfully as a creativity multiplier, rather than diluting the artistry of the end result. I love the human elements you scattered throughout the game: your children's initials in some of the navigation icons is an especially nice touch!
Thank you!!
Kotlin Multiplatform is production level at this point. It doesn't really make sense to go with iOS only and then Android maybe later unless you only know iOS development and just plan to make someone else port it.
My main limiting factor was dealing with two app store submissions. I'm already using expo.dev as a cross-platform solution.
Looks really good, are you in the first photo? How old are you? Good luck for your future projects!
As with anything word-gamey involving internet, you will probably have to trim down your dictionary. While I'm very glad my "sxxg" beat their "txxt", the first probably shouldn't be allowed (although there are non-rude definitions) and the second definitely shouldn't have!
Still, a very fun game, well made.
I kept (some of) the profanity in, kind of on purpose...because it's hilarious! I did remove some extreme slurs though.
Harder than I expected. pretty cool.
406 browser not supported (opera mobile). Come on...
Same on old Chrome desktop (116)
Keep up the good work!
I don't know if it's my adblockers but your page loads an insanely large picture of your face and then people playing scrabble. Like I have to scroll two directions to see the whole picture large...
Oops - my son's face is large though! I'm not seeing it on my devices or Chrome/Safari...
Firefox browser on Android, tracks don't seem to select. I couldn't figure out how to get letters up there (though they would appear to select if I tapped them)
I’ll check it out on Firefox. I just got an Android around a week ago so haven’t tested it much there yet.
I love this.
I'm also building a simple game using Claude, so this is quite inspirational. Keep going!
Using claude for game design, art design, and coding. I can see you're even using AI to respond to comments in this thread. At that point this is just a game made by AI. It's one thing to lean on AI to cover our blind spots, but if AI is in all stages of the pipeline I just wonder what the point of all this is?
Did you really need to waste money and resources to make a simple word game? Are people really getting to be this lazy already? /rant
I've been using my real human hands and brain to respond to this thread. Woof.
Maybe look at it this way: With a full time job and 3 kids at home, I was able to learn a ton about shipping apps with new tools available over the last few months on the side, and also have some fun with my family and friends. I struggle to call that "lazy" or a "waste".