Ranked #1281
200 Points
Word Search Cubes is a word search game where all the words are hidden in a 3 dimensional cube, and each time you find a word the letters vanish and the cube gets smaller. When all the words have been found, the cube is gone. To find the words, you spin the cube around, then select the letters - if you are right, the word will disappear. You score points for finding the words quickly, and for finding bonus words. When you find a word, you can see its definition.All the words are listed in the panel on the right. The ones that are easiest to find are highlighted, although you might be able to find some of the others if you look carefully. As the cube gets smaller, more words become visible and those are then highlighted in the panel. There are also bonus words which are not shown in the panel, and finding these give a short hint about where to find other words.Objective is to get the highest scores on the leaderboards.
I am not the biggest fan of 2D games (probably won't try to make any more myself!) so a 2D / 3D game like this is intriguing. Found the controls to be the biggest issue. I was not sure why you need both thumbs to start with, I guess that's just for left or right handed use. Perhaps an on-screen 'joystick' icon just to show people where to touch, if they held a finger or thumb down for long enough the graphic could appear? Don't know if that makes sense. Also, how about a hint to rotate the device, just to show idiots like me how to play the game when you get a bit stuck. When you turn to portrait, you can only use the upper part of the screen to control the cube?
Since this is a 3D game, how about having a bit more perspective so you can see some more 3D, maybe by not always having the cube dead in the center of the screen - I don't know if that would work though but it might make it more intuitive because when the views switch it isn't immediately apparent what has happened, until you think it through. Again, I'm just thinking about people with short attention spans (again, like myself).
Good though.
Apart from that, I'd like the graphics to be a bit brighter. Looked a little dark.
That said, challenging game and good idea using orientation to change views. Quite liked the graphics. Made the jump from the first pillar OK but it took a while to figure it out.
Thanks for the comments. The idea of weekly challenges is really good, I was thinking of adding some smaller games (like 4x4, 5x5) so will probably work the challenge idea in with that development. Also the very big game can take a couple of hours to play and most people are not doing that, because it gets more difficult as you get in to the cube. So smaller games with challenges will work better.
The timer is just a score-reducing thing, so the longer you take the less you score. But if it's not clear then that's not good. I'll make the instructions clearer for now, but will probably drop the timer in favour of something else, like more bonuses in the cube, and perhaps have timed games as part of a challenge later on.
The word definitions should be a bigger part of the game anyway, and showing the definition over the whole screen would be no problem at all. Will see how that looks but it will probably go in the next update, in about a month from now.
Thanks again.