Show HN: Truncate, a word-based strategy game

Congrats on both launching and on the unique game design.

This desperately needs a attack result preview, or if that's too hard at least a "you're starting an attack you'll lose" warning of some kind. The combat resolution rules are unintuitive, and I keep sometimes incorrectly predicting the results, and sometimes even not understanding why I lost despite the information in the battle pane. Losing an attack is so crippling that you might as well resign.

It doesn't help that the only place to find the rules is scattered about in a tedious tutorial. The tutorial itself can't be fixed; it's the nature of tutorials to suck. But it'd be great to have a help page with the rules accessible somewhere. The rules aren't long, so it doesn't seem incompatible with the aesthetics of the game.

liambigelow · a year ago

Thanks! I can't say I disagree — we hoped to structure the tutorial as a sequence of rules, but the explanations tend to grow. A concise reference would indeed be good.

> This desperately needs a attack result preview

Not too hard, just waiting for all the feedback to roll in before deciding either way. If we stay sitting on the fence, it might make its way in as a "tutor" mode :)

sanderjd · a year ago

Personally, I disagree on adding this, outside a "tutor" mode. Figuring out if I'm blundering (and requiring my opponent to do the same) is a big part of the fun. Without that potential for mistake, I think it would be like chess masters playing themselves to a draw in every game.

someone7x · a year ago

To chime in further, the battle log would be more legible if it listed the rules that applied.

Eg:

Defender bonus = 2

Shortest word = 2 (*in*, top, sugar)

Attacker word = 5 (*twine*)

Attacker wins (5-4=1)

At least for me I’m always getting ganked and trying to decipher the battle log to see why it didn’t do what I expected.

That being said, thanks it is fun.

dr_kiszonka · a year ago

The game looks great!

One way to fix the tutorial is to make it more interactive than just asking players to place a specific tile in a specific place. Once you explain the most fundamental rules, introduce subsequent ones in the form of mini games where players decide what tiles to put and where, and can lose. Have a look at the Queen's Gambit game about chess. It is free if you have a Netflix subscription.

One feature that I would request is to let me organize my tiles. Just my 2 cents.

meristohm · a year ago

I "played" the tutorial (after trying a game without knowing anything, during which I appreciated the error messages as guidance, and was confused when I'd attack and lose, and my inner game designer was tickled by the ability to play nonsense words- lowers the barrier to play) and it didn't feel overlong or too sucky, though the "that's all the rules!" message at the end was welcome. Still, a page of rules would be welcome, yes.

mrgoldenbrown · a year ago

The rules or tutorial should also say which dictionary is being used. There are plenty of standard dictionaries to use for word games,like SOWPODs.

Kudos for creating the game. Reading upside down is difficult. In Scrabble you could turn the board around to face you when it was your turn.

Why did my opponent place qxa to begin with?

I tried to get through the tutorial , but could not. Maybe simplify the rules or simplify the game before I'd play, but others may enjoy.

I do play wordle and other NYTimes word games , and scrabble, so I'm not averse to those types of games.

Maybe I should have had a cup of coffee first. I will try again later.

But still hats off for creating it. Congratulations.

sanderjd · a year ago

Counterpoint: I found the tutorial great for teaching a game that is not super simple, in a good way. I think it would be a mistake to simplify the rules in order to simplify the learning process. I think the rules are elegant, just not straightforward, as is the case for many excellent games.

Agreed on the reading-upside-down thing, though I think it's still the right choice. But I suspect it's something anyone playing the game regularly would become adept at very quickly. Maybe just add a quick "rotate board" button / hotkey to use when evaluating the opponent's position.

I think my one minor criticism is the "touching the opponent's town" thing. I find that it's not a particularly fun goal. Many such things go with a "war" analogy to add some interest, like an army destroying the opponent's fortress or whatever. If you'd prefer to avoid that (though the "attacking" and "defending" language is already in the game), it could be like you're building a path for a rabbit to get a carrot, or maybe it's water and you're building a bridge to the other side.

Or the win state could instead be to eliminate all the opponent's letters. As-is, that would eliminate the fun "racing" mechanic, which would be unfortunate. But perhaps (going back to the bridge idea), the "town" squares could be like bridge supports, and reaching one would knock out anything it is "holding up". So you could still race to knock out the critical "root" support, which would usually win in nearly the same way as currently (but maybe with a few more cleanup moves).

Love the game! Hope the ideas are interesting rather than annoying :)

Edit to add: Oh! One thing I actually missed in the tutorial (but figured out in the example game) is that words must be valid top-to-bottom or left-to-right. I was confused by the outcome of some battles in my initial games, due to building "valid" words bottom-to-top only to see them defeated by shorter ones. Relatedly, maybe in the "easy" modes, valid words could be highlighted? Then I would have known that when I built "yria" from top-to-bottom, it was not actually the valid word "airy" read from bottom-to-top.

liambigelow · a year ago

Amazing! Thanks for the detailed thoughts.

Yes, we once posited that you were trying to deliver soup to the other town haha. The current language is really in lieu of figuring out what the best lore for the game is, and these are great suggestions we can mull over :)

liambigelow · a year ago

Thanks! And thanks for the great feedback — the tutorial is indeed long, but that just means more (fun) iteration to go!

> Why did my opponent place qxa to begin with?

Much like us, the NPC can be plagued with a simply terrible hand ;)

Again, appreciate the notes!

jsnell · a year ago

pimlottc · a year ago

Gameplay feedback: it feels like you have to win (or lose) quickly, else the middle board gets cramped and it bogs down to a long slog. Sometimes I dropped junk in protected areas of the game just to wait for my opponent to be forced to touch my “front line”.

I also desperately wanted to be able to exchange tiles. Getting a rack full of vowels is frustrating, you just have to waste turns playing them out knowing they will weaken your board and get destroyed.

jameshart · a year ago

Everyone's take on a game is going to be subjective, but just to counter some of this feedback... For me, these aren't gameplay weaknesses - they're a summary of what makes eking out a win satisfying.

> it feels like you have to win (or lose) quickly, else the middle board gets cramped and it bogs down to a long slog.

Why is that a bad thing? If games always resulted in a quick win for whoever gets the lucky start/letter draw, where would be the fun? Restricted territory in the middle of the board is what the players have to overcome.

> Sometimes I dropped junk in protected areas of the game just to wait for my opponent to be forced to touch my “front line”.

That sounds like a sound strategy. It forces you to spend a resource (protected space; potentially useful tiles) in order to take advantage of the defensive advantage, with the potential payoff that it can turn the tide of the game. It also helps build up a reservoir of usable swappable tiles... but using swaps well is also tricky, so it's not pure advantage.

Playing these waiting game phases effectively, for me, added to the sense of satisfaction in pulling off a win.

> I also desperately wanted to be able to exchange tiles. Getting a rack full of vowels is frustrating, you just have to waste turns playing them out knowing they will weaken your board and get destroyed.

You're not wasting turns, you're getting rid of vowels in order to get to draw new letters. Finding ways to make the sacrifices without weakening your position requires smart play. Again, getting past these obstacles makes for a fun challenge.

nathancahill · a year ago

Played for a while and agree with the feedback. Too many vowels, I'm trying to understand why that is compared to Scrabble. I think because the words are formed incrementally vs Scrabble where all tiles are placed at once.

slayflayfish · a year ago

Tuning the vowel to consonant ratio was an important part of optimizing scrabbles appeal to users actually, back in the day

yakkomajuri · a year ago

This is super cool. My main feedback at this point is about the dictionary. I'd have it be open on the side so I can see the board and use it at the same time. Or, as a half-step, have a shortcut to open it and have ESC close it. Although personally I'd prefer the former.

But congrats on this, it's awesome!

card_zero · a year ago

Maybe putting down a tile should open the dictionary and look up the words formed, instead of the player having to type them in, and then there should be buttons for "make this move" and "make a different move instead".

I think this might take away a bit from the "strategy" of the game. Or not so much strategy but the mental fog that plays a role in blunders and the like - the same as how it's harder to get a grasp on your opponent's words at a glance because they're flipped. Just my 2c

Definitely a shortcut to open it, with focus on the search field and escape to close it. Ideally above or below the board so it doesn't block the screen.

Ah yeah sorry I wrote "be open" but I meant "open" as in it isn't constantly open but opens without hiding the board

Thanks! Great notes

octopusRex · a year ago

pcthrowaway · a year ago

OK I'm going to go ahead and say this is an absolutely phenomenal game. Great, original idea. I could see myself playing this with friends, and it could even be a successful board game, though we'd need a legend explaining the different things that can happen when a battle occurs (namely, if one of the attack words is not valid, the attack outright fails regardless of what's defending)

Needs a dictionary also.

For the online version (which is gorgeous) it really needs a multiplayer discovery mode.

I'm in room code PEEP if anyone fancies a game: https://truncate.town/#PEEP

edit: seems like the board editing in multiplayer mode doesn't work

cassepipe · a year ago

There is a dictionary. Just click on the bottom right arrow and click on the dictionary.

Amazing, thanks for the feedback!

> edit: seems like the board editing in multiplayer mode doesn't work

oops, will get onto fixing that

Forgot to mention — it's fully open source at https://github.com/TruncateGame/Truncate for anyone who likes poking their digital nose around :)

Can you include text instructions of how to play the game instead of only having an interactive tutorial? I find the slow scroll speed and interactive nature doesn't work as well for me as being able to scan a document.

If I forget a specific point it's frustrating to have to go through the whole tutorial again.

mdaniel · a year ago

Congratulations on the game, and thanks for choosing to share the source!

It would help if it had a license file in the repo in order to express what rights you grant to others

Oh good note thanks, my mistake. It should be MIT, I'll add the license today.

leke · a year ago

I incorrectly guessed this was a JS coded game.

zuminator · a year ago

I'd like some indication that a word was invalid, say, if the tiles comprising that word were faded, so I wouldn't have to keep looking words up before every other move. Either that, or have a top level button for the dictionary, and when it opens list all the valid words currently in play so you can see at a glance if your opponent's word will be hazardous.

I also agree with the other comment that said knowing the outcome of your potential move would be helpful. Maybe even a training mode where every time you're about to self-own, the game displays a question mark and gives you a chance to retract the move.

The only other thing is, and I don't know how much it would impact gameplay, but having two-letter words count as valid seems like a cheat somehow because of all the sketchy ones like "oi" and "er." I wish the game could be configured to only accept 3+ letter words.

Overall, gameplay was interesting, but as it stands, not addictive.

ncallaway · a year ago

I would love a small visual indicator of which words were valid/invalid on the board. Maybe something as simple as valid words having slightly green letters, and invalid words having slightly red letters. Or a subtle little sparkle effect around letters that are part of a valid word.

Especially when I'm having to read my entire opponent's board upside down, I find parsing which words are valid/invalid to be a time-consuming, mildly frustrating, and not super fun aspect of the game.

Maybe that takes too much of the challenge out, but I don't find it's a part of the game I feel like I should have to be good at.

Other minor feedback:

- There's no cursor or focus indicator on the search box in the dictionary.

- The dictionary should open auto-focused. If I click "open dictionary" with the mouse, and start typing nothing happens. I have to click on the "search" box before I can type. This is especially annoying given the lack of feedback from the above point on the search box.

Thanks for the feedback — it's looking like we'll have to find some solution for showing valid words, based on the comments.

(Also, will fix the dictionary, thanks!)

Since I didn't say in it my comment, I'll say it in the reply:

Congratulations on getting this far! Games are a huge amount of work (so much more than it looks like on the surface), so shipping something is always an accomplishment.

I definitely had fun for the rounds I played the other day, which is why I bothered with feedback. It's a great little concept, and well-executed. I really appreciated the tutorial (especially the "sample game", that really solidified the concepts for me after the step-by-step tutorial).

Great work so far! Excited to see where it ends up!

(And one more super minor feedback while I'm here: when I'm playing on keyboard and mouse, I'd love the ability to press a keyboard key to select a letter, then click to play on the board with a mouse. So: "press the keyboard key 'i', then click on an empty but legal space to play", and one of my 'i' tiles goes to that space". As far as I can tell this would be manageable, since it doesn't seem to matter which 'i' tile I play from my hand).