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Posted by u/dylanhouli 2 years ago
Show HN: I made a web game that makes practicing basic arithmetic funworchle.com/mathic/...
Hey, maker here.

After launching a daily word search game, I randomly thought of this math game while driving. Finally got around to making it and I think it turned out pretty cool.

It’s a math search game that’s meant to help you practice your quick addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division skills.

I’m hoping it’ll help people (even those like me who aren’t big on math) learn and increase their speeds.

(There are also some settings you can enable to make the game harder)

If you try it out, please let me know if you found it fun, if you have anything you’d like me to add, or if you have any other feedback.

And if you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer. Much appreciated.

mysterydip · 2 years ago
I want to share this with my daughter who needs some practice with these, but the timer just causes anxiety. Could you add a mode with unlimited time but three "lives"?
dylanhouli · 2 years ago
Hey, thanks for checking it out! I had the idea for a "zen" mode where you could play forever with no timer. Didn't think of adding lives though. Cool idea.

Would you want separate statistics for these "lives mode" games?

mariocesar · 2 years ago
Count the streaks until you click "pass" and then display the highest number of streaks.
boringg · 2 years ago
Appreciate the update. We will try this after school today!! Kids are pumped! Appreciative of the quick integration of the features.

Quick test this am - looks like a small bug with the M.N. Counter for arithmetic in lives mode is getting to numbers that arent possible based on the combos available. First one works, second gets into 20s. I thought it might have just been a presentation issue but when i subtract the new MN from the previous one and input that it gives me a lost life!

Deleted Comment

thih9 · 2 years ago
Open your browser's JS console and run:

    gameTracker.timeLeft = 9999999999
This will add ~300 years of playtime.

coolThingsFirst · 2 years ago
it is not enough
dylanhouli · 2 years ago
Hey, just wanted to let you know I just launched an update that includes a lives game mode, as well as some other game modes and features. Thanks for your suggestion again!
ant6n · 2 years ago
That timer is brutal. Do you even „get“ any time for solving anything? Or is this just meant to run for a minute and then u lose?
dylanhouli · 2 years ago
Haha ya that's how it works atm.

My idea was that you could run a few rounds to practice certain operators and watch how your average scores improve over time. And since the rounds are only a minute, it's low commitment.

Going to add other modes though based on feedback

faitswulff · 2 years ago
Exactly what I came to the comments to request.
dylanhouli · 2 years ago
Thanks for feedback! Same question for you as well: would you want separate statistics for this type of mode?
dylanhouli · 2 years ago
Hey, thanks again for your feedback. Just wanted to let you know "lives" mode is now live, along with some other modes.
rahimnathwani · 2 years ago
This is cool. When it's in 'all operators' mode it's challenging!

One thing that I noticed is that there's a timer. Depending on your target audience, you might want to make that optional.

My son is 7 and finds the timer on Zetamac creates unnecessary stress. So I made something simpler for him that just shows a fixed number of problems (with no time limit), and uses a cookie to track the streak length: https://math.twilam.com/

dylanhouli · 2 years ago
If you want another tough challenge, try division operators with longer equations and advanced division enabled. Quite evil at times.

Thanks for feedback on the timer, that seems to be common so I'm going to work on getting an alternative option out soon.

zi_ · 2 years ago
Love this!

I also made a math game 3 years ago.

https://github.com/zineanteoh/clean-the-river

I called it “Clean the river”. It is a web-based game that lets children practice forming and solving basic mathematical expressions by "cleaning the river".

dylanhouli · 2 years ago
Thanks for checking it out! Clean the River looks great
ModernMech · 2 years ago
Reminds me of Number Munchers: https://classicreload.com/number-munchers.html#

You could add in some elements that game uses to make it more appealing to kids.

dylanhouli · 2 years ago
Number Munchers is neat. Thanks for sharing!
acl · 2 years ago
Neat! I played for a while with my 10yo son. The timer is a bit of a drag. My suggestion is to either implement a lives mechanism like the other poster suggested, or to make the timer reset after each success.
dylanhouli · 2 years ago
Thanks for playing and for the feedback! Definitely going to work on getting out an calmer alternative mode.
Rebellos · 2 years ago
Amazing little game, thank you!

Being able to swipe over the equation instead of tapping would improve playability a lot! Also I sometimes feel like the first tap is not registered right after the new MN appears.

dylanhouli · 2 years ago
Thanks :D

Will add swipe controls to my todos, I decided against adding it because the other word search games on the site will occasionally overflow off-screen (so swiping is required to move around the grid) but might add it as a toggle for this game.

Will look into the tap problem, thanks for reporting!

rsfern · 2 years ago
Follow-up on this feedback - it would be nice if the UI supported tapping individual blocks sequentially like the game strands does. Currently (on safari on iOS at least) if you go to highlight e.g. 6+4 one at a time the UI reports “invalid equation” if you highlight 6 and + instead of highlighting the start and end of the range in one go

Otherwise, cool game!

jayaprabhakar · 2 years ago
This looks cool. The UI animation is good. Looking forward for more such games. A few minor feedbacks.

1. Even on phones, it leaves a lot of margin/padding, and the boxes are a bit too small. Can you make it a bit more responsive and use up the whole width of the screen (up to a max width of course) 2. Only the first and the last needs to be selected, and so slide doesn't work. 3. A minor confusion in the UI, that I'm not sure if the equation can span across multiple lines?

dylanhouli · 2 years ago
Hey, thanks for the feedback!

For the sizing, try the grid size and counter text size options in the game settings. You can also change the grid dimensions to better fit your screen (or add some difficulty)!

Adding slide gestures is on the todos.

Also just shipped a fix to make multi-row selections impossible to make that more clear.

Thanks again

LeChuck · 2 years ago
Very nice, love it. I play the chess version of this pretty often. You might like to take a look at Lichess’ Puzzle Storm (and Puzzle Streak/Puzzle Race) for some inspiration on other game modes.

https://lichess.org/storm

dylanhouli · 2 years ago
Thanks for playing and sharing! Will check those out