alt Hacker NewsShow HN: Alphabet Soup, a multiplayer game, build the longest word to win
I've been working on a simple multiplayer word game called Alphabet Soup.
It's a bit like NYT Spelling Bee, except it's multiplayer and only your best (longest) word counts toward your score. So, instead of trying to find as many words as possible, the game is more about finding one unusually good word.
You can play with friends in a private match, or, you can join a public Arena match to play against other players who are online. If no one else is around, you'll be matched with a bot.
The game works well with just 2 players, but, also works with bigger groups since the game isn't turn-based.
Would love to hear any thoughts or questions :)
Comments
Fun game. Would be nice if there was a single player mode that simply prints the letters and at the end shows the longest word that was missed. That way you can play it offline and place a phone in the center of the table and people can play around it with pen and paper or by just thinking of the word and everyone announces at the end.
This is a lot of fun! I'm pleased that I was able to defeat "hitler1488", but you may want to add some content filtering for the name choosing step.
Nice!
Needs a chat space to say "gg" at the end. It could even be just a button that does just that, if you're worried about unmoderated chat. Competitive games feel unfinished without it!
I was in second place for the first three rounds and then swept to the front on the last round.
Idea: it would be more interesting/competitive if you could immediately see others' submissions, and if those words were then "taken" and can't be reused.
Currently you're just kind of twiddling your thumbs after you submit and run out of ideas.
It was also not immediately obvious to me that you can submit multiple words, so I was wasting time entering and deleting attempts before finally submitting the best one.
Finally, instead of fixed timers between rounds, you might want to have a "Ready!" or "Go!" button.
Nice. I didn't know you could reuse the same letter! How are you handling the multiplayer framework?
I like it!
UX feedback: I don’t understand when a round ends. Surprised by it each time.
Super fun, thanks for sharing! Might be handy to explain the rules up top (can't seem to see them):
- Proper nouns allowed
- Can reuse letters
- Longest word possible might not use all the letters
Awesome game. This round was quite funny since the other person got an antonym.
Me asexually +18 38 lessee +12 31 Noah slays +10 30
This is great! No need to require a button click in between rounds IMO. Just start the timer.
A word got denied with the error "Word was already used". I had in fact not used it already, neither had any of the others. That caused me to lose the game, very unsatisfying. (nice game otherwise)
I'm the horrible kind of person to go off and use an AI-assisted cheat that can be pasted into the console. Very fun game, nonetheless!
Gentle and fun. Reminds me of isketch back in the days of flash.
I look forward to playing this with my mother.
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Sorry folks, something broke! Looking into it and will post here with updates.
UPDATE: Looks like Railway is having problems. Trying to find mitigation on my side.