Hey there! I'm the brains behind the math crossword game on my site. This game is all about making math a little more fun – users just drag and drop numbers to fill in the blanks and move on to the next level if they get it right. Let me know if face any issues or have any suggestions! :) |
Another issue is that multiplicative identity seems to be used too often. That is, too often the equation boils down to something like "8 × 1 = 8" or "5 ÷ 1 = 5". This would ramp up the difficulty considerably faster, though, so you might want to slow down the complexity increase a bit to compensate.
Oh, and a way to copy the grid into ASCII art would be cool, including for bug reports. For example, after a few puzzles I ran into
9 4 + 2 = 9 ?
It would be good if it was stateful. I pressed the Back button by mistake, and when I returned it was back to square one. This could be as simple as saving a starting seed plus an offset per level. Gamifying it with a level counter would be great.
Colour-blind users would probably appreciate more than colour feedback to indicate an error.
Sometimes there are equations which are completely filled in with no holes, so they don't affect the puzzle at all. These could be removed entirely, since they are effectively just noise.
Ordering the numbers which have to be dragged, well, numerically, would be nice - it doesn't make the puzzle any easier or harder, just makes it easier to see how many I have of each digit.
Would you be OK to publish the code online? I'm sure lots of people would want to fork and play around with the idea.
I noticed this as well, but there's a non-silly subtlety that I think you and I both missed - this easy puzzle was the first introduction of the multi-digit concept. Everything prior had been single digits only.
I got a puzzle with one equation already solved, and only intersecting with one other, so it wasn't actually doing anything. I can't see an identifier to specify which one it is, but it has 11 - 7 = 4 vertically on the left side.
The difficulty seems to plateau pretty quickly.
https://i.postimg.cc/L5bbp2Hy/Screenshot-2024-01-08-at-7-06-...
At least half of that preference is the ability to use keyboard controls. The math is also more tailorable to user ability (use the "type" menu), though within each game it goes from hard to easy.
Please understand that the reason I'm offering these suggestions is because of how much I like what you've made :-)
On mobile I would imagine the dragon drop UX is great, but on desktop it's fairly clunky. If I could type in the number with the keyboard and have it grab and drop the correct tile, that would be an awesome improvement.
It would be nice if there was a way to skip forward levels. The first time through the way you did it is perfect as it teaches you how to play, but every time after that it's kind of annoying (especially by the drag and drop interface on desktop). If there was a button you could click or something that would let you skip ahead to certain levels, that would be a real nice improvement.
This is really awesome work, thank you for sharing!
This would also do well on paper, so I wonder if it can be printed.
https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/T5vHCnVvd3Da.png?o=1
Edit: I read that as 3-x=3. I would assume that when reading up that should be the case. Reading x-3 with = above it doesn't seem intuitive to me.
I think the game would be much more enjoyable if you have curated levels rather then getting them randomly generated.
Also it seems that my progress is lost whenever I refresh the page.
Could you add a way to race other people to solve the puzzles?
I've made the first few levels easy on purpose just to get people used to the game.
And yes, it gets very tricky. Specially after 20-25 puzzles. :)
Sometimes it generates ambiguous situations, where two solutions are both equally valid.
For example
equation: 5 - _ = _ available numbers: 3 and 2
