💾 Archived View for stack.tilde.cafe › gemlog › 2021-11-28.spellbinding.gmi captured on 2024-07-08 at 23:52:28. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-09-08)
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5 days ago I introduced a word-puzzle game to the Gemini community.
After playing the old NYT game, and SpellBinding for a couple of days I realized that one problem with the game is that you feel alone. After I added a top-5 feature that lists the 5 players who found the most words, the game-space feels more populated.
I am aware of potential addictive/competitive issues of doing so, but I feel that it takes the game out of the vacuum. Humans are social animals, and while Gemini is a quiet space, knowing that other people have been there is encouraging. To make sure you are not in direct competition with others I use a different metric for top-5: they are selected by the number of words guessed, while normal gameplay is scored in points based on word length.
I am considering making this feature optional. Send me a /msg and let me know if the leaderboard bothers you.
Instead of entering a word, you can send me a message by typing '/msg whatevs...'. The /msg command is the first command I implemented, and I can add more as I think of interesting things. Anyway, the message feature is live, and I will read your messages at some point, usually pretty quickly as I am messing with the game quite heavily.
The message feature is a good place to lodge a complaint about a missing word, or some other dictionary issue you feel needs addressing.
I am a bit concerned about spam, so the number per-user per-game messages will be limited.
Till next time