[hoqqanen]

I saw your Show HN post a few weeks ago! Really appreciate the smoothness of your UI and the simplicity of your onboarding, I see how much you have dialed in. I've been working on a daily puzzle game too (it's getting there...), maybe you'd enjoy it https://slab17.com/

[paulhebert]

Slab 17 is a really interesting and unique puzzle! I love the act of slab creation. It’s very satisfying and the aesthetics are great.

I found the instruction about double tapping a little confusing at first but figured it out as I played.

Nice work!

[hoqqanen]

Thanks for the note and the feedback about the instructions! Got me to rework the wording.

[catoc]

Very cool!

I solved the first puzzle: -Congratulations! -You solved Paprika with 18 slabs

But this was unclear: -You've solved 0 puzzles! -Reveal Rule -Next Puzzle -View Archive -You still have 2 guesses left. Finish guessing before revealing the rule if you're feeling brave!

I have to do 2 more guesses before I can reveal the rule that I already figured out?

[hoqqanen]

Thanks for the note! This part needs work and I really appreciate the call out. I'll try to explain here to share, and maybe clarify my own thinking.

Getting any of the guesses right counts as a win, and you get different guessing slabs for each guess (this latter part isn't made at all clear upfront).

If you have a rule in your head like "no red", but the true rule is "no red or orange", it's possible that on the guessing slabs those two rules evaluate to the same things (e.g. there weren't any oranges present in the guessing slabs). You could then try the rest of the guessing slabs, which might have an example where you get it wrong, giving more gameplay.

I wanted to give a victory on any subset of 5 slabs guessed successfully since trying to get all the guesses is very hard (especially the first guess on many puzzles), and you can get new information from guesses which fail, which offers some progression. Hence getting "you won" and the ability to reveal the rule (I've also thought about keeping the reveal unavailable until you do all guesses) and the invitation to keep playing.

If you have a minute I'd love to hear from you if that makes sense and if you have thoughts about what might make more sense. I've also tried to consider ways of restructuring the gameplay, e.g. automatically progressing to the next set of guessing slabs, such that the flow here is less confusing.

Thanks for playing, and for sharing!

[catoc]

That makes sense.

Maybe just simply state it?

E.g, instead of “you solved paprika”:

“You got 5 slabs right; 10 more to prove you really solved the rule”

(Being better versed in making games than I am, you can likely come up with more enticing prose)

[hoqqanen]

Appreciate the reply, this is simpler than my thinking and I like it!