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paulhebert 2 days ago

I shared this last month, but I’m still having a lot of fun working on it.

I made a daily word puzzle called Tiled Words.

https://tiledwords.com

Currently about 2,000 people play every day and I’ve released 59 puzzles!

One feature I’m excited about is crowdsourcing puzzles. Today’s puzzle is a “community puzzle” made entirely from clues that players submitted! I plan to do this every week or two.

I wrote about launching and the first month of puzzles if you want to learn more!

https://paulmakeswebsites.com/writing/a-month-of-tiled-words...

remus an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Been playing daily since you last posted it on hn, great fun! For me Im a bit of an amatuer so the level is pretty nice, usually getting sub 5 mins or so.

A little feedback: clues which are cultural references can be pretty frustrating if you don't knw the reference. There have been some where even after piecing it together I've still got no idea how the answer matches the clue.

s3graham a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I started playing a couple weeks ago (and got my Mum and one of her friends playing too).

I enjoy it, but I find the clues seem a bit too easy, and honestly I'm normally terrible at crosswords. Take that for what you will, totally understandable if you're aiming at "cozy/relaxing".

I appreciate the polish of the UI compared to a lot of the other janky word games out there anyway.

paulhebert a day ago | parent | next [-]

Hey, thanks for playing and sharing!

And thanks for the feedback! Balancing the puzzles is really tricky so it’s good to know when folks think it’s too easy or too hard.

It’s interesting to see the range of player skill (and how much they do or don’t enjoy challenge.) On a recent puzzle one player left feedback that it was too easy and another left feedback that it was too hard.

My aim is for puzzles to be challenging but not frustrating. The hard part is frustrating means different things to different people. From my stats I can see some players complete a puzzle in 2 minutes that takes another player 20.

For the daily puzzle I do lean towards making it a little easier but I want to explore a few ideas for making trickier puzzles in the future.

- Releasing additional “bonus” puzzles this are harder or more complex - Letting people build and share their own puzzles at whatever difficulty they choose - Adding settings to allow players to toggle things like hiding the theme at first.

That said, I’m still trying to figure out the overall balance for the daily puzzles! It’s good to know you think they’re a little on the easy side. I should try to gather more feedback and maybe tweak that!

ludston a day ago | parent [-]

I've been playing it with my wife of an evening. I like the difficulty level. It's nice to be able to solve it in under 5 minutes before bed.

paulhebert 17 hours ago | parent [-]

Thanks! Yeah that’s the difficulty I’m mostly aiming for now.

That said, I’d love to offer packs of harder puzzles or user generated puzzles in the future!

8organicbits a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I've been playing by just looking at the title of the puzzle and ignoring the clues. I can solve most of the puzzles that way, and it increases the challenge.

paulhebert a day ago | parent [-]

Yeah I’ve heard from a few people that they play this way! I’d like to add an official setting for it in the future

triword a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd love to learn how you grew your audience so fast! I built https://dailybaffle.com but haven't reached your numbers yet.

slig a day ago | parent | next [-]

Have you submitted it to those daily -DLE games directories?

paulhebert a day ago | parent [-]

I submitted it to playlin.io

I noticed it was added to a couple of others that I didn't submit to (goldles.com and dles.aukspot.com) I'm not sure if there are others I should be aware of.

paulhebert a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Daily Baffle looks nice!

I’m not totally sure! Marketing is not my strong suit.

I think my biggest advantages are:

- It’s sticky. A good percentage of players keep playing once they start

- Organic sharing. Lots of people have told me they shared it with friends and family. (I also built a “share” feature)

The pattern so far has been:

- I share it or someone else shares it somewhere.

- There’s a big spike of people trying it out.

- I get some new players.

- The player count stays roughly steady until it gets shared somewhere else that gains traction.

It was featured by Thinky Games. Sharing here got people interested. Someone shared it on Metafilter and that got a lot of views. Other folks have shared it on other sites that have led to smaller bumps.

But I’m still experimenting.

triword a day ago | parent [-]

Thanks!

tclancy 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thanks for this game, I've been playing it since you last posted it and it's become a regular in my morning brain wake-up routine of Minute Cryptic, Shuffalo at The New Yorker and a couple others, so I like the bite-size nature of it a lot.

paulhebert 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Hey, that’s lovely to hear! I haven’t heard of Shuffalo. I’ll have to check that out!

victorbuilds 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

First time I see such a simple but attractive puzzle. I had to try to reproduce it using my Codorex tool, it's semi-functional needs a few more iterations:

https://codorex.com/shared/zIe6BrLCVfaPt1DuWm1DeyoMIIeTPyed

Congrats on the traction!

slig 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Congrats, I liked your game and the level of polish you put into it.

paulhebert a day ago | parent [-]

Thanks!

john___matrix 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm not really a puzzle fan generally but that is absolutely brilliant!

paulhebert 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Thanks!

phodo a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My sister and I are glued to it, and she continues to destroy me, with consistent zero reveals and half the time to complete, as yours truly. We love this game. thanks.

paulhebert a day ago | parent [-]

Thats awesome haha, thanks!

shadeslayer_ a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My friend from work showed me this a couple of weeks ago, and now we all play it as a daily office ritual. Great game!

paulhebert 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Hey, that’s awesome! If you’re comfortable sharing I’d be curious what industry you’re in!

SeriousStorm a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My wife and I play this every day. It's the only fault word games that has ever caught my interest.

The UI is fantastic too.

paulhebert a day ago | parent [-]

Thanks! I’m glad you and your wife are enjoying it!

StrangeSound 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just to let you know, my friend and I play this every day since I saw it here a little while back. Thank you!

paulhebert a day ago | parent [-]

That’s awesome, thank you!

mh- a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I do a lot of word games (mostly crosswords.) This is great, congrats on launching!

paulhebert a day ago | parent [-]

Thanks, I’m glad you like it!

brk a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Have been enjoying it daily since I saw it on HN a few weeks ago. Great game!

paulhebert a day ago | parent [-]

That’s awesome, thanks!

quasigloam a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I really enjoy tiled words, thanks for making this new addition to my daily routine!

paulhebert a day ago | parent [-]

Thanks for playing!

melwinalm2 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is such a fun game. Thank you.

paulhebert a day ago | parent [-]

Thanks!

yakkomajuri 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

this is really nice, thanks for sharing!

pockettanyas 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Really fun!

mattmar96 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Dude this rules!! Your animations are fantastic. Nice job and I'm really happy to hear you've got a consistent player base!

I also made a puzzle game in a similar vein slidecross.io

paulhebert 15 hours ago | parent [-]

Thanks! Slide Cross is fun!

I love UI animations but they can be overkill for a lot of web UIs so it was fun to have a playground where I could lean into that more. (Though I still ended up pulling back from some of my more “out there” experiments haha)

ajxs a day ago | parent | prev [-]

This is really fun! Great work!

paulhebert a day ago | parent [-]

Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it!