Good article on game theory w/r/t puzzle games

[RootBound]

Hey all,

I'm new here--I have a game in production, and I'm very grateful for how helpful you all are in the forums.

Yesterday I read this article on the Guardian about trying to design the next Wordle.

The game the author came up with is fun, and while it's not an adventure game, I think the discussion touches on fundamental aspects of game design and puzzle design that directly relate to making adventure games enjoyable yet challenging for the player. I found it useful for myself, at least.

Here it is for those interested:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/dec/22/i-was-asked-to-invent-the-next-wordle-how-hard-could-it-be

Hope you enjoy!

--RootBound

[cat]

Interesting read, thanks for sharing!

[eri0o]

The article is really interesting, thanks for sharing it!

I observed the "find the next X" pursuit is seldomly successful. There's a lot of factors that makes certain things work.

I think the greatest strength in wordle was the sharing functionality, the single word a day that is the same for everyone and the fact it came out during the pandemic and people wanted ways to connect with others - you could share your game to someone or a group and this would lead to social interactions.

[Stupot]

Interesting article with some food for thought.

The final game he came up with is pretty good. I was able to get 100% on my first go, so of course I like it 😜

I do wish people would stop saying Josh Wardle "invented" Wordle, though. The article does mention that it's basically a lexical version of Mastermind, but fails to mention that even as a word game it is not new.

I know I've said this elsewhere in the forum but I'd been playing it with some of my students (albeit with 4 letters and more chances) long before Mr Wardle turned it into an app and practically named it after himself. It was on a list of warmers to play with ESL students, alongside dozens of other classic whiteboard word games. He might as well have "invented" a game called Hangdle

I feel it's relevant to mention that here because the article is about coming up with a brand new game, not rebranding an existing one. Despite that, I appreciated the depths this article's author goes to in order to create a new game, and some interesting points came up.

I wonder whether we should earnestly try to devise our own puzzle game as a community and see if we can't sell it to a newspaper for millions of dollars.

[eri0o]

I wonder whether we should earnestly try to devise our own puzzle game as a community and see if we can't sell it to a newspaper for millions of dollars.

I feel like crosswords and other puzzles normally associated with newspapers, there's a certain feeling of getting some utility from it as you learn something.

I have an idea of an updated version of Encarta Mindmaze, where the rooms you get access has some date restrictions and we use the British Museum collection archive as the place to mine the questions. Unfortunately this is much more trouble than Wordle in implementation wise.