[HN Gopher] Show HN: Figure is a daily logic puzzle game
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       Show HN: Figure is a daily logic puzzle game
        
       Hello, HN! Figure is a little side project I've been working on.
       Someone described it as Bejeweled meets Wordle.  I built the puzzle
       interface and website in Next.js and React, which was a first for
       me and overall a great learning experience. The daily puzzle data
       is queued up in a PostgreSQL table. Another table stores anonymous
       solve stats. Once a day, a cron job hits a serverless API that
       promotes the next puzzle as "live" and prompts Next.js to update
       the prebaked static site with the new data. The game state is
       managed with Redux and your stats are persisted to localStorage.
       Framer Motion for animations. Styling is mostly Tailwind CSS. I use
       Figma for design and Logic Pro to make the sounds.  I get a lot of
       questions about how the puzzles are generated. It's not super sexy.
       I generate random grids of tiles and then run them through a brute
       force solver (sounds rough but the puzzles don't feel anything).
       Every few days, I play through puzzles that look promising based on
       the solution space and pick some good ones to go into the queue.
       The rest are sent back to the void (again, painless).  I've spent a
       little bit of time tinkering with a procedural generator, but so
       far the random ones are better. The downsides of the random
       approach are (1) the curation effort required, and (2) the high
       variability in puzzle difficulty. I have a feeling there's a whole
       body of math and CS knowledge where Figure is an example of
       something that I don't know the name for (imposter syndrome
       intensifies).  As for the future of Figure, I feel strongly about
       keeping it free of ads, login walls, in-app purchases, or anything
       else that infringes on enjoyment or privacy. I'd also like to make
       sure Figure is accessible to everyone. English isn't exactly
       required to play, but translations for the UI and website would be
       nice. I've tried to build Figure to be friendly to people who have
       color vision deficiency and people who rely on screen readers and
       keyboard navigation, but I have no idea if it's actually any fun in
       these cases.  Here are some miscellaneous thoughts...  1. It's been
       surprisingly satisfying to build a web game with a modern frontend
       stack. I've noticed a lot of grumbling on HN over the years from OG
       web developers who yearn for the days of semantic HTML, a
       sprinkling of CSS, and vanilla JS. I was in that boat too and have
       grumbled plenty about the breakneck pace of frontend evolution. One
       of my goals with this project was to pick some popular frameworks
       and give them an honest try. I'm now a believer, but there's still
       no way I can keep up with all the progress.  2. I found Tailwind
       awkward at first, but after a while I realized I was using Figma a
       lot less and just designing in code with utility classes, which is
       great for focus and flow. Having lived through the Web 2.0
       standards revolution, it was hard to let go of some deeply rooted
       opinions about semantic purity, but overall I'm sold.  3. I really
       love side projects. At most jobs, you're pushed toward
       specialization. Side projects allow you to build out a generalist
       skillset, which makes you better at your core job function and
       better at collaborating with others. It's also liberating to
       explore and pivot around without time pressure. Figure started out
       as a 3D fidget toy in Unity where you fling projectiles at floating
       objects...  4. I made this game on my trusty 2013 MacBook Pro,
       which has been almost completely sufficient (ahem Docker tth_tth).
       I'll probably get an M2 Air soon, but I'm reluctant to say goodbye
       to the best computer I've ever owned.  5. I'm very grateful for the
       people who build and maintain open source projects. It's also
       delightful how many paid services offer generous free tiers to let
       developers play around: Figma, GitHub, Vercel, Supabase, and
       Pipedream, just to name a few that I'm currently using actively. If
       you work on FOSS and/or these excellent platforms, thank you.
       Anyway, hope you like it. Happy to answer any questions.
        
       Author : sumul
       Score  : 293 points
       Date   : 2022-08-07 13:01 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (figure.game)
 (TXT) w3m dump (figure.game)
        
       | Sverigevader wrote:
       | Hey! Fun game! I very much enjoyed the technical details in your
       | post. Nice work!
       | 
       | Problem: I can't share results with Firefox on my Android. It
       | works with Chrome. After pressing the share button, I get the
       | share menu but when I choose for example WhatsApp, it fails with
       | a toast msg: "Can't send empty message". Choosing "Copy to
       | Clipboard" works but it copies null. Any thoughts? :)
       | 
       | Funny thing is; This isn't the first time this has happened with
       | these Wordle style games where you share your results in a msg.
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | Thanks for reporting. That's a known bug that I'll try to fix
         | soon. Firefox on Android is doing something weird with the Web
         | Share API [1]. In a nutshell, the API has two methods. The
         | first is `canShare`, which lets you ask the browser if it can
         | share the data you're about to give it. The second is `share`,
         | which does the sharing. I only attempt to `share` if the
         | browser gives me the green light via `canShare`. So basically
         | Firefox on Android is saying, "yup this object looks good" and
         | then "nope won't share it." If it just told me no in the first
         | `canShare` check, it would gracefully fall back to just going
         | straight to your clipboard, which is what happens in Firefox
         | desktop browsers.
         | 
         | For now, you can use the little "Copy" button in the corner of
         | the results text bubble area. That one just goes straight to
         | the clipboard reliably.
         | 
         | [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
         | US/docs/Web/API/Web_Share_A...
        
       | marssaxman wrote:
       | This is fun! Thanks. I've added it to my little folder of daily
       | puzzles (along with Wordle, PlusWord, Shortyz, Weaver, and 7
       | Little Words).
        
         | bbkane wrote:
         | You might also enjoy https://colorfle.com/ . I play it every
         | evening
        
       | parasti wrote:
       | I couldn't figure out how the game is supposed to be played. I
       | clicked some squares and something happened, but what? Your help
       | screen doesn't contain any information about this. Maybe it's
       | obvious once you know it?
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | Thanks for letting me know, and sorry if that was frustrating.
         | Your goal is to clear away all the tiles. Tiles that are linked
         | together clear together. Links are made when same-color tiles
         | are contiguously adjacent to each other. Blank spaces are
         | filled in from above. You have a fixed number of moves
         | available to clear them all. Hope that helps!
        
           | bscphil wrote:
           | 1. I think giving a proper set of rules in the screen
           | incorrectly titled "how to play" would help a lot. Currently
           | it doesn't tell you how to play, it just says what the win
           | conditions are: "Get rid of all of the tiles before running
           | out of moves."
           | 
           | 2. The animation is actually quite misleading, given the
           | absence of rules. When you pick a tile from the bottom row,
           | tiles that will be part of the new bottom row (or touching a
           | tile on the new bottom row) become solid _before_ they slide
           | down to the bottom. (This may only be detectable on slow
           | devices. Unfortunately, the animation for your game is
           | extremely slow and janky on my Android phone from 2019.) This
           | gives the impression that my touch has somehow transformed
           | them, and I spent probably a dozen  "games" frustratedly
           | trying to figure out _how_ they were being transformed before
           | I realized that it was just a misleading animation.
           | 
           | IMO the way it should work is that the removed tiles should
           | disappear, then all tiles should slide to the bottom, and
           | only _then_ should tiles newly located on the bottom become
           | solid.
        
             | sumul wrote:
             | That's really helpful, thank you. I'll see what I can do to
             | optimize the animation performance more, and I'll take a
             | closer look at the animation timing at lower frame rates.
             | Definitely don't want to mislead or confuse!
        
       | bnert wrote:
       | This is really well designed!
       | 
       | The only bit of feedback which can potentially give a better
       | first time player is a small tutorial on what/how to click.
       | 
       | Great work, and thanks for sharing :)
        
       | RheingoldRiver wrote:
       | It took me 2 tries to solve, I clicked randomly the first time
       | when I realized you had unlimited solves, then I was like, "oh
       | it's probably kinda bad to link a bunch all at once, I should
       | link them strategically" and then I solved it.
       | 
       | I think it would be cool to have two options for solves (1)
       | Limited retries but a higher allowed number of moves and (2)
       | Unlimited retries but requires perfect solves. Let people pick
       | which category they wanna try....but they gotta pick which
       | they're going for prior to seeing the puzzle!
       | 
       | The "share score" screen would then advertise which version they
       | went for and a friend group can compete the same way.
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | Neat ideas, thank you for sharing. I'll think about it!
        
       | marchelzo wrote:
       | Neat game. I was bored so I wrote a little brute-force solver in
       | my toy language. Takes almost a minute to solve today's puzzle
       | though: http://paste.pr0.tips/hgs
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | Love this. Where can I learn more about your toy language?
        
         | feanaro wrote:
         | Your language feels Haskellish, with some Rust-like syntax and
         | mutation thrown in. Were those languages inspiration?
        
           | marchelzo wrote:
           | They were :) Before I took the time to write a vim syntax
           | file I just used the Rust one with a couple of tweaks and the
           | syntax was close enough that it sort of worked.
        
             | feanaro wrote:
             | Looks pretty sweet! I'd consider using something like that
             | for scripting if it had a non-toy implementation.
        
       | t_mann wrote:
       | Nice, and cool that this was your first project! Could you share
       | more on your background / how you went about learning those
       | tools? Did you use online courses, or just read the docs?
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | Oh, just want to clarify that I've done tons of projects. I've
         | been designing and building interactive products professionally
         | for about 20 years. This was just my first time using Next.js,
         | React, etc. I spent about a week reading the official docs for
         | React, Redux, and Next.js and then started building, with lots
         | of visits back to the docs, Stack Overflow, tutorials, and
         | blogs as needed throughout the process.
        
           | t_mann wrote:
           | Thanks. The UX feels really polished, that makes sense if
           | you're a seasoned professional.
           | 
           | One thing, just curious: did you look intwo whether your
           | privacy notice is GDPR-compliant? Sounds more like frank talk
           | than legalese, haha
        
             | sumul wrote:
             | I did look into it, although I'm not a lawyer. My
             | understanding is that privacy notice compliance is a
             | function of how personal information is being collected and
             | used. I chose to collect no personal information
             | whatsoever. I think of this as being respectful of you as
             | the user and to the spirit of these types of regulations,
             | rather than being "maliciously compliant" (like the
             | ubiquitous strong default action of "accept all cookies").
             | 
             | Here's a quote from https://gdpr.eu/privacy-notice/
             | (emphasis mine)
             | 
             | > _If an organization is collecting information_ from an
             | individual directly, it must include the following
             | information in its privacy notice:
        
       | 3bproblem wrote:
       | This game was fun enough that I could see there being some real
       | money to be made here if you play it right, good luck!
       | 
       | https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/business/media/new-york-t...
        
         | O__________O wrote:
         | Wordle's growth peaked shortly after it was bought for 1
         | million by the New York Times at roughly $3 per user.
         | 
         | - To see the decline, here are some links:
         | 
         | https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=wordle
         | 
         | - Look at the decline of tweets per day found here:
         | 
         | https://mobile.twitter.com/WordleStats
        
           | t_mann wrote:
           | Frankly, the decline looks less bad than I'd expected, given
           | how short my own appreciation and of those in my bubble
           | lasted. Google searches are still at ~50% of peak volume (not
           | going to log in to Twitter just to view the thread). Also,
           | Wordle is fun enough that I can see it having a renaissance
           | at some later point (look at Rubik's cubes - the initial boom
           | lasted for 1-2 years, but they're still popular four decades
           | later).
        
           | stvnwd wrote:
           | How tight is the correlation between tweets and users though?
           | Anecdotally I know quite a few people who play every day but
           | only ever share their results in private channels. For those
           | that want to compare their results with the general
           | population there is now also WordleBot which probably eats
           | into the tweetshare.
        
           | bagels wrote:
           | Yes, if the goal was to make money, Wardle struck at exactly
           | the right time, right at the peak.
        
             | O__________O wrote:
             | More likely that part of the fun of sharing Wordle was it
             | was not prompting a huge media company, as soon as NYT
             | bought it, my guess is people were less likely to share it,
             | especially other news organizations.
             | 
             | I was honestly surprised to see it had declined, since
             | Wordle still shows up in top ten Google trends on almost a
             | daily basis.
        
       | nstart wrote:
       | Been playing since day 9 I think (someone shared it on Twitter).
       | Thanks for making this. Wife and I have added it our list of
       | puzzle a day games.
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | Awesome! I did tweet about it to my very small following about
         | a month ago, and all the retweets and enthusiasm were a very
         | encouraging signal to keep working on it. Open to any feedback
         | since you've been at it for a while now.
        
         | hackerlight wrote:
         | What others are on that list
        
           | pier25 wrote:
           | Exactly!
        
       | chresko wrote:
       | Thanks a ton for making Figure colorblind friendly. Many/most
       | tile matching games are color-based, making them difficult if not
       | impossible to play!
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | Cheers! Curious to hear if it's friendly enough for you or if
         | it feels like you're maybe having less fun than someone with
         | full color vision.
        
           | onychomys wrote:
           | I can't speak for everybody, but since the light green and
           | the white are so close, I have to rely on shapes for those
           | two instead. And then my dumb brain refuses to accept that
           | squares and diamonds are different, lol. Maybe we could get
           | either triangles or circles as one of those colors? Otherwise
           | it's totally color-friendly!
        
             | sumul wrote:
             | That's so helpful, thank you. I wonder if anyone would
             | notice or care if I swapped the triangle for the square or
             | diamond...
        
       | t6jvcereio wrote:
       | We're back to doing websites now? I thought these days everything
       | had to be an app...
        
       | sAbakumoff wrote:
        
         | recursiveturtle wrote:
         | This post is at odds with the spirit of HN. Please consider
         | another collegial, charitable mindset.
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | bambax wrote:
       | Good game, and great writeup. I'm clearly in the grumblers' camp
       | but will try to take your example as an encouragement to move
       | ahead.
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | Give it a whirl! A couple early decisions I made about this
         | that I think really helped: (1) Try to pick frameworks that
         | have been fairly mature for at least a year or two. Even with
         | stable stuff like React Hooks and Next.js I ran into issues
         | that would have been much harder to figure out a year ago. (2)
         | Set aside some time to learn but don't try to learn it all
         | before starting to tinker. I spent about a week reading the
         | official documentation for React, Redux, and Next.js, but it
         | all really clicked in the first few days of building.
        
       | kitbrennan wrote:
       | I think it's great! I'd really like to be able to enter my email
       | to get a daily unobtrusive reminder to my inbox.
        
         | wruza wrote:
         | Few popups could also help. It doesn't feel like I'm seriously
         | engaging unless there is a cookie consent.
         | 
         | Btw, you can share the page with a reminder app and set up
         | daily notification.
        
           | sumul wrote:
           | This is the way.
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | Noted, thanks!
        
       | MilnerRoute wrote:
       | I played it and it was fun.
       | 
       | Wordle (and some other games) do a mandatory pop-up of the
       | instructions just to make sure first-timers understand the rules.
       | This game didn't -- I see now that there's a small question mark
       | at the upper left -- but "clear everything", and then seeing that
       | things disappeared when I clicked on them, was kind of enough. If
       | I really thought about it, I might even say that was part of the
       | fun for me -- figuring out the rules of the system and
       | considering what strategy to use.
       | 
       | I wonder if that could be part of the game -- like on some days,
       | "gravity flows to the right", like the view of the puzzle has
       | been tilted by 90 degrees. (And some days it's up?) Or maybe you
       | can rotate the puzzle by 90 degrees -- so you can transform the
       | right or left side column into the crucial bottom row. Maybe a
       | mystery square, that doesn't have a color or is all colors or
       | switches colors with each click?
       | 
       | Anyways, this game was fun, and had a nice-looking interface.
       | Glad you had fun building it. (Someone once asked me how to
       | monetize a side project, and I said "add it to your portfolio and
       | use it to land a high-paying job.")
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | I'm glad you enjoyed figuring it out without instructions.
         | Thanks for letting me know. I got some helpful feedback early
         | on that resulted in the "Pick any tile from the bottom row"
         | prompt. I grew up on Atari and NES and would never read game
         | instructions (Atari was before I could read anyway, ha), so my
         | hope was that I wouldn't need to force a walkthrough on anyone,
         | especially since there's no risk in poking at it to see what
         | happens.
        
       | matthewfcarlson wrote:
       | I love this. I know I'm a choosy beggar here, but could you add a
       | pwa manifest so I can put it on my Home Screen? Alternatively, is
       | it open source/accepting pull requests?
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | It's ready to be installed on your home screen! I mention this
         | on the help page. :-)
        
       | pelagic_sky wrote:
       | I didn't really need another daily puzzle in my life, but at
       | least this one looks great and has satisfying interactions. :)
        
       | Glyptodon wrote:
       | I'm used to this style of game pulling to the right or left to
       | get rid of empty rows and requiring at least two adjacent
       | matching blocks to remove something.
        
       | jrh206 wrote:
       | 11 moves felt like too many. I made my first moves without
       | thinking ahead, and before I knew it, I'd accidentally solved the
       | puzzle on my first try. I felt that the puzzle lacked that
       | elegant "idea" at its core that makes a good puzzle great. (Just
       | my personal opinion)
       | 
       | That said, the visual design is beautiful, and it's inspiring
       | that somebody was able to create this.
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | I really appreciate the feedback. This is one of the main
         | things I think about, and relates strongly to the part I
         | mentioned about puzzle generation and difficulty variability. I
         | do want this to feel like a consistently great puzzle.
         | 
         | For comparison, the median number of tries it took people to
         | solve yesterday's puzzle (10 moves) was 7. Figure #35's median
         | was 19 tries! Today's puzzle is definitely one of the easier
         | ones, fwiw.
         | 
         | I've vaguely noticed some patterns of tile arrangements that
         | create interesting sequences that are nontrivial but solvable
         | if given some thought. I would love to develop a more formal
         | system where these patterns are used to build up puzzles with
         | more intent than the random boards I'm currently making. If
         | this sort of thing is in anyone's wheelhouse, I'd love to hear
         | from you.
        
           | asicsp wrote:
           | https://davidkoloski.me/blog/intelligent-brute-forcing/ might
           | help, if you don't already have some sort of automatic solver
           | to figure out solutions.
        
             | freediver wrote:
             | This was a great read, thanks for posting. Would like to
             | see similar quality article for solution to similar
             | problems using genetic algorithms.
        
           | jrh206 wrote:
           | You might find Jonathan Blow's talks interesting. This one
           | springs to mind: https://youtu.be/C5FUtrmO7gI
           | 
           | Also this breakdown by Game Maker's Toolkit:
           | https://youtu.be/2zK8ItePe3Y
        
             | sumul wrote:
             | Will watch, thanks so much.
        
           | Closi wrote:
           | The "number of tries" metric might be out if anyone else
           | solved it like I did (ie going back to see if there was some
           | smarter solution).
           | 
           | As for your comment about nontrivial puzzles - absolutely!
           | 100% agree - the joy in a lot of puzzle games like bejewelled
           | is unexpectedly clearing half the board with a clever move!
        
             | sumul wrote:
             | Not sure exactly what you mean. It only logs the number of
             | tries for your first solve, but you can keep playing around
             | with it after that without affecting your stats (or the
             | global stats).
        
               | Closi wrote:
               | Sorry, I mean that I went like this:
               | 
               | * Solve two pieces
               | 
               | * "Oh, maybe if I did it the other way around I could get
               | that in one" <Reset>
               | 
               | * "ok that worked but I wonder if it's different if I did
               | this..." <Reset>
               | 
               | * "Ok actually all of those have been exactly the same
               | number of moves, but how about if I just reset and do the
               | first again?" <Reset then complete>
               | 
               | I just mean I'm not sure I would class the above as "4
               | attempts" to show difficulty as you are just using it to
               | test scenarios (ie the above person found it trivial even
               | though it took four 'attempts')
        
               | sumul wrote:
               | Ah, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.
        
               | Closi wrote:
               | Good luck with the site, production value is great and
               | looks amazing! Finding the difficulty balance will be
               | tough to satisfy both repeat and new visitors, but
               | worthwhile!
        
         | crazygringo wrote:
         | Either you got really lucky or I'm really dumb :) -- because it
         | took me a solid 6 attempts to solve the game. No matter what I
         | started with, I always had 1 piece left over on all previous 5
         | attempts.
        
           | t_mann wrote:
           | today's puzzle? I find it hard to fail unless I explicilty
           | try. I can see but two dependencies in there (you need to
           | connect the diamonds on the left and the circles on the
           | right), and both are very easy to spot (one of them you're
           | very likely to resolve even if you just click around).
           | 
           | Edit: ok, there are a few more dependencies, but they really
           | easily resolve on their own.
        
         | rsaz wrote:
         | I think the number of moves isn't the key stat here, just the
         | number of tries to complete in that many moves.
         | 
         | I do wonder what the minimum required moves to complete a level
         | is, but it seems it would be at least close to 11. How many
         | moves did it take you?
        
           | jrh206 wrote:
           | I completed it in 11 moves and assumed that that was the
           | minimum.
        
             | rsaz wrote:
             | Ah, think I misunderstood you originally. Anecdotally, it
             | took me a couple tries and some thought, and I felt quite
             | satisfied when I figured it out!
             | 
             | I also find it takes me a few tries on puzzles like this to
             | see if I really like them, so hopefully if you try some
             | harder ones in the future you'll enjoy it more.
        
           | sumul wrote:
           | The minimum is 11 today. It varies by puzzle but is always
           | the minimum for that arrangement of tiles. Assuming my solver
           | is any good.
        
       | thehigherlife wrote:
       | I like it but wish the puzzle had gravity at the x,y intersection
       | and not just the x axis. For example if you clear out a row it
       | would shift the other rows over to the left.
        
         | Someone wrote:
         | I think you meant _column_ and _columns_ , not _row(s)_ (for
         | those who need mnemonics: Rows Run to the Right, Columns Climb)
         | 
         | I think whether to do that is a design choice, though. The
         | current setup puts a penalty on clearing center columns early,
         | effectively splitting the game in two.
        
           | quietbritishjim wrote:
           | Easier than a mnemonic is just remembering what real-life
           | rows and columns are. A Roman column [1] pretty obviously has
           | to be vertical or it wouldn't do its job of holding up a
           | ceiling. And you get ducks in a row but they're not often
           | stacked on top of each other.
           | 
           | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column
        
           | thehigherlife wrote:
           | You are correct. I meant Columns. If you clear a column it
           | the whole puzzle should shift left.
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | Interesting! I've been considering introducing new types of
         | tiles that have unique behaviors in the future, and this could
         | be one of those. I want to balance simplicity with fun, so plan
         | A is to refine the puzzle generation strategy as much as I can
         | before doing stuff like this though.
        
       | kretaceous wrote:
       | Love, love, love the look and feel. Kudos on launching and the
       | top-tier end result.
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | Hey thanks!
        
       | bilater wrote:
       | Nicely done! I like these sort of simple UI games. Built one
       | myself using Next.js + Tailwind CSS:
       | https://www.puzzlingtiles.xyz/
        
         | t_mann wrote:
         | fyi, when I try to move a tile in your puzzle, it opens the
         | image in the browser instead. if i click back in the browser,
         | it loads a new puzzle.
        
       | O__________O wrote:
       | Curious, why did you pick a .game gTLD, which costs a few hundred
       | a year, every year?
        
         | paulgb wrote:
         | That stuck out to me as well, given the mention of free tiers
         | on other services. The .game TLD's rates are unfortunately
         | prohibitive for side project games. .games is affordable,
         | though.
        
           | sumul wrote:
           | Fair point. I mention the free tiers because I found it to be
           | really low friction to start building without worrying about
           | the pricing of every little service and platform (I did make
           | sure the paid tiers weren't going to be a huge issue or
           | surprise once I was ready to graduate). I'm willing to invest
           | a bit in side projects once they get to a certain point of
           | maturity and have the potential to maybe pay for themselves
           | someday, so at this point I'm paying for the domain, Vercel,
           | Supabase, and the Streamline icons I use.
        
             | paulgb wrote:
             | Makes sense, thanks!
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | Naming things to be unique and memorable is difficult, and
         | finding a good domain is a big part of that when your product
         | is a website. It wasn't my first choice to support the price
         | gouging of .game, but after a lot of deliberation and some very
         | helpful feedback I got about the not-very-good original name of
         | this game (which had a .app domain), I decided to just go for
         | it. Also Namecheap had a good deal on the first year, which
         | took the edge off a bit. After living for it for a month or so,
         | I rather like the name/domain figure.game, so I don't regret
         | the decision.
        
       | zeroonetwothree wrote:
       | Apparently I suck because I gave up after five tries.
        
       | gardenhedge wrote:
        
       | hackerlight wrote:
       | Amazing, but how can I play previous ones ??
       | 
       | I could sit here for an hour playing them but was done in a few
       | minutes.
        
         | rsaz wrote:
         | This is partially the point of the recent wave of daily games
         | spurred by wordle. You can only play today's puzzle, so you'll
         | have to return to the site every day to try new ones.
         | 
         | In fact I don't think I've seen any that allow you to play past
         | day's puzzles.
        
           | hackerlight wrote:
           | I don't see why this is a good feature for the user. I just
           | want to play it.
        
             | rsaz wrote:
             | It isn't, it's a feature to keep the website relevant for a
             | longer time. I'd be really happy to see this one break the
             | mold, considering the rest of the development seems really
             | reasonable and user-friendly.
        
               | sumul wrote:
               | I truly love how the daily puzzle format is intentionally
               | nonaddictive. So many games and apps are designed
               | specifically to get you addicted. This was my favorite
               | thing about Wordle when I first heard about it, and it's
               | one of the main reasons I embraced this model for
               | inspiration.
               | 
               | That said, there has been consistent feedback that people
               | want to play old puzzles, myself included. At least for
               | me, the replay value is actually pretty solid after a few
               | days' opportunity of forgetting the solution. So the next
               | big feature I'm working on is the puzzle archive. Stay
               | tuned!
        
               | arecurrence wrote:
               | The NY Times Crossword archives past puzzles and it
               | really helped me improve at Crosswords in general. The
               | archive dates back over a decade and there are certainly
               | days that I just really want to do a bunch of crosswords.
               | 
               | I suspect this combo of a new daily puzzle and the
               | complete archive will be the winning implementation over
               | time.
        
           | Kaibeezy wrote:
           | There were a couple of sites that archive and let you play
           | previous Wordle puzzles, unless NYT has lawyered them.
        
           | brw wrote:
           | I've been playing Cell Tower[1] for a while now, and it's one
           | of the few that does allow you to redo previous puzzles
           | you've missed (or have already taken and just want to redo
           | anyway). The streak however only increases when you play
           | today's puzzle.
           | 
           | [1] https://www.andrewt.net/puzzles/cell-tower
        
         | sumul wrote:
         | Working on it!
        
           | hackerlight wrote:
           | Thanks, I will bookmark it.
        
       | jldugger wrote:
       | Relatively similar to
       | https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/same...
       | and a dozen such puzzle games from long before it.
        
       | gauddasa wrote:
       | Different, yet 80% same.
       | 
       | apt install swell-foop
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-07 23:00 UTC)