This is beautifully designed and engaging and potentially a fun way to learn things! Amazing work.
Some things you could add to make it stickier:
1. Have a natural end where you "win" - possibly I just didn't hit this, it's the kind of game I'd play in bed in the morning as long as the play time was similar to Wordle and the other NYT games.
2. Have facts show up when you get something right! Could literally just be the opening sentence from the article and a link to the article. This extra context stimulates curiosity - I'd love to be able to have "Space physics? That doesn't sound like a real thing..." and then have the hat guy pop up and go, "You cracked it chief. Space Physics is the study of high atmosphere plasmas."
EDIT: for comparison, have a look at Metazooa - https://metazooa.com/ - which did this very well.
It is, though? I also had the same map come up about five times, showing a picture of the Parthenon and the Athenian acropolis, but it consistently insisted that these were of Orchomenos, which also had an acropolis but AFAIK is not the same; they are about 80 miles apart.
edit: it appears that Orchomenus also has an area of the city that Wikipedia refers to as the acropolis; I'm wondering if the game pulls the acropolis data from the Athenian Acropolis but then mistakenly attributes it to Orchomenus? I thought it might be because some great physics discovery was made there (given the daily challenge genre) but I haven't seen anything.
I also played the map game, and in addition to getting the same article several times I got two articles that had some of the same photos but whose locations were ~100 miles apart.
After nine rounds it suddenly ended and I was confused.
I played the Map mode and got the same page several times, and then the game ended with half my "life" left. It was really fun but I passed a lot of rounds just on memory
I've played one game of ransom. This is fun but I have some comments/suggestions.
1. Letters are sometimes barely shuffled
2. Sometimes same clue with different redacted words come one after another so you know which words are redacted
3. Sometimes (foreign names for example) the answer is not redacted due to accents. Same for similar words (complexity uncensored for "complex system"). Sometimes picture or video contains answer.
4. I guess you use some popularity metric for articles? I got Greece, ancient Greece and archaic Greece, though the topic is allegedly physics? Maybe filtering a bit more would be better
5. Before I started game I didn't know how long it is supposed to last. Apparently it's indefinite, and I lost on purpose to verify it.
6. Some feeling of progression with harder tasks would also feel nice.
Two pain points:
- No "reward" after guessing it even completing. If based on Wikipedia, give me some facts about the places! (Even if wrong imo)
- I did the physics map daily. I got the same location 4 times in a single play. Definitely need logic to prevent doing the same location to the same use in a certain time period.
Really fun, took me over 20 articles before I realized I can just type the letters on my keyboard instead of clicking them one by one with my mouse :^).
Readit News
Some things you could add to make it stickier:
1. Have a natural end where you "win" - possibly I just didn't hit this, it's the kind of game I'd play in bed in the morning as long as the play time was similar to Wordle and the other NYT games.
2. Have facts show up when you get something right! Could literally just be the opening sentence from the article and a link to the article. This extra context stimulates curiosity - I'd love to be able to have "Space physics? That doesn't sound like a real thing..." and then have the hat guy pop up and go, "You cracked it chief. Space Physics is the study of high atmosphere plasmas."
EDIT: for comparison, have a look at Metazooa - https://metazooa.com/ - which did this very well.
It's also not clear if there's a goal in each game. So far as I can tell it goes on forever.
Edit: both the lock and dial game modes put me into the same dial game mode; I'm going to guess it's a bug. They also seem to be for the same article.
Dead Comment
After nine rounds it suddenly ended and I was confused.
1. Letters are sometimes barely shuffled 2. Sometimes same clue with different redacted words come one after another so you know which words are redacted 3. Sometimes (foreign names for example) the answer is not redacted due to accents. Same for similar words (complexity uncensored for "complex system"). Sometimes picture or video contains answer. 4. I guess you use some popularity metric for articles? I got Greece, ancient Greece and archaic Greece, though the topic is allegedly physics? Maybe filtering a bit more would be better 5. Before I started game I didn't know how long it is supposed to last. Apparently it's indefinite, and I lost on purpose to verify it. 6. Some feeling of progression with harder tasks would also feel nice.
Two pain points: - No "reward" after guessing it even completing. If based on Wikipedia, give me some facts about the places! (Even if wrong imo) - I did the physics map daily. I got the same location 4 times in a single play. Definitely need logic to prevent doing the same location to the same use in a certain time period.