Let me know what scores you get in the various difficulty modes! Can you get the rank of 'Super-hyper-mega-awesome '?
All constructive feedback is very much appreciated. Let me know what you think of the messages and if they're pitched OK!
Stay funky!
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stuff to do:
- tinkering with graphics, sound and messages.
Changes since last time:
- unscrambled letters are shown in a different colour! (Thanks for the idea, Milinko!)
- a new, graphical, timer
- messages based on score, highscore, #times played etc.
- I changed the wordlists - previously it was just based on wordlength. Now, I used that as a starting point, but then spent some hours going through all the lists and shifted some about. There are 82, 108 and 101 countries in easy, medium and hard respectively. 183 countries all in all. Medium has parts of 'easy' and parts of 'hard'.
The following countries were deleted:
"Aruba",
"Macau",
"Nauru",
"Tuvalu",
"Palau",
"Bouvet Island",
"British Virgin Islands",
"Christmas Island",
"French Polynesia",
"Howland Island",
"Iles Eparses",
"Jarvis Island",
"Johnston Atoll",
"Juan de Nova Island",
"Kingman Reef",
"Midway Islands",
"Montserrat",
"Navassa Island",
"Netherlands Antilles",
"Northern Mariana Islands",
"Palmyra Atoll",
"Saint Kitts and Nevis",
"Sao Tome and Principe",
"Tromelin Island",
"Turks and Caicos Islands",
"Wake Island",
"Wallis and Futuna",
Pitcairn Island was discovered in 1767 by the British and settled in 1790 by the Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian companions. Pitcairn was the first Pacific island to become a British colony (in 1838) and today remains the last vestige of that empire in the South Pacific. Outmigration, primarily to New Zealand, has thinned the population from a peak of 233 in 1937 to less than 50 today.
Its good, I'm crap!
I tried all three and I got a high of 86 on easy, 66 on med, 65 on hard. Why did you remove the places you removed?- you've taken away my brother's house in the Caribbean! Does Hong Kong still count as a country or whatever?
Best Wishes,
Ice
As I mentioned via PM, I'll probably change the list again for the next version, to be a more accurate list of actual 'countries'.
Thanks for the feedback with your scores and also all the help you've given throughout!
Addictive
That was quite nice, luckily my scrabble skills came into play. The game was fun and addictive (in a good way atleast), a fine way to test up on my geography :)
The game was set out very well, very easy to use. The design of the game looked great, very slick and interesting. The helping aids were well set out to not give it away entirely which was very well planned.
The only problem I saw with this game was the lack of a prize or something. It was just doing it for the points, now though there was a high score system (which was good), it needed more of an objective.
But anyway, great game!
If you beat my highscore of 234 points, I'll give you a mystery prize.
Just send me a high-quality screenshot for your prize.
Glad you liked everything.
Thanks for the review!
Good game
Right off the bat let me tell you that my High Scores were, Easy: 46, Medium: 12, Hard: 17. With that said let me also say that you should add a high score list. I think that there are sites that will host those for free. For some reason hard was easier than medium for me. I am not sure why.
Graphics: 5 I gave you a 5 because while they did look nice they were pretty basic and couldn't have been to hard to make.
Style: 8 I give you an 8 because I like the idea of having something to do with something that was somewhat academic being fun.
Sound: 4 The music got annoying pretty quick.
Interactivity: 6 While the whole game was on interactivity it would have been better if there was a way to hit the help button without the mouse and without having to reclick the cursor back into the typing area. If you could find a way to get rid of the mouse in the game all together it would be awesome.
Overall: 7 It was a fun game that is all I really have to say. I can't really think of anything else to add other than what I already talked about. I would make it like in Medium though if the country is two words keep the letters in their respective words. With Hard though leave it the way it is.
Thanks a lot for letting me know your high scores!
You get a point for each letter - so in 'hard' you might still net points even having used a couple of hints. Also, I think having multiple words can make it easier, as there's only so many countries with more than one word.
I learnt a lot whilst making this, so it's hard for me to guage how other folk would do. I think I may need to reduce the scores needed for the various grades...
Thanks for explaining your scores!
Well, the graphics here were certainly easier to make than in, say Pico Jr. Jr. They weren't particularly challenging, but I did spend a fair bit of time picking colours, superimposing golden spiralling rectangles and seeing where to place stuff...
You're right about the 'help' button clicking being a bit annoying. Noticed that myself, but as I already use all the main keyboard keys, I couldn't think of a hotkey. I suppose I could maybe use the question mark button...
Thanks for the suggestion of keeping the letters in the respective words. I may not implement that, as I think it'd make those words a bit too easy. As you get a point for each character, the longer names SHOULD be harder - and you also get multiple capitalised letters along with the 'shape' to help you more...
Thanks again, for what is a great, comprehensive, review.
K
^^Good Points^^
Yet another installment of this series, and definitely the best one yet. I see you have adopted just about every idea I had suggested in the last few games, and they all worked out just as I had hoped they would. The game was much more enjoyable with the difficulty levels, and the game worked well. Very nice job.
^^Needs Improving^^
I'm afraid this series has little to improve upon in my mind. For what the game is supposed to do, I can't think of anything specific.
Review Request Club
Glad you like the improvements!
I've got some tweaks to make vefore v1 though.
Thanks for the review!
Quick fire, addictive game
This has all the qualities required in a game - it's fast, it's simple to work, it's highly addictive and it's a winner.
I like the way that it teaches people to enhance their typing skills while quickly putting the names of the countries into the computer.
I like this game and I do think you have scope to make it into further games, but with different themes.
Still, I think from an earlier review, you did say you wouldn't consider that...
[Review Request Club]
In response to your 2nd last line: I never said any such thing!
In my reponse to your review for v0.9, I wrote:
"If you mean, 'when can we see more word-scrambles'... I'll be finishing this one off soon. After that, I'll maybe do a few more if folk enjoy them."
From that alone, I would infer that if folk enjoyed this game, I would do a few more as long as the demand was there.
I was musing on how easy it would be to get a few 'top 100 films' lists, get 200 film names and then just replace the 3 country name lists I currently have with film names.
I personally like the educational value of learning country names though - there's not nearly as much value in learning the names of 200 films.
I was thinking about doing the names of all the US presidents, but there's only been 42 (and 2 share the same first/last name). There haven't been enough British Prime Ministers either.
I may well do a game with country capitals or all the country leaders, perhaps with a few minor modifications...
Or maybe I'd just choose actual words? Maybe try to make a list of my top 200 favourite words or something...
In any case, if folk genuinely want another wordscramble game, it'd be folly not to make another.
