Show HN: An endless scrolling word search game

Show HN: An endless scrolling word search game(endless-wordsearch.com)

25 points by marcusdev 158 days ago | 16 comments

I built a procedurally generated word-search game where the puzzle never ends - as you scroll, the grid expands infinitely and new words appear. It’s designed to be quick to pick up, satisfying to play, and a little addictive.

The core game works without an account using the pre-defined games, but signing up allows you to generate games using any topic you can think of.

I’d love feedback on gameplay, performance, and whether the endless format feels engaging over time. If you try it, I’d really appreciate any bug reports or suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

gregsadetsky 157 days ago |

Super fun, congrats! Works really well

My only feedback is just that the homepage had a lot of elements that distracted me initially - I wasn't sure if I had to type something (the input examples changing all the time made me think it was important to fill it out)

I ended up clicking "Start Game" on a whim and was glad that I could check it out immediately. Maybe make the "I just want to play now" option/button/CTA larger/more obvious (i.e. giving it more focus)?

To test it again, I just typed some words in the input bar, it forced me to login, I chose the Google login, I was then brought back to https://endless-wordsearch.com/#/sso-callback but the top right button still says Sign In, and my input was lost. So I assume the login didn't work?

I typed my input again, a popup appeared (mentioning Clerk)... then it finally logged me in. Now I'm back at the homepage, and my input has been lost again :-)

I typed my input a third type, and now I'm getting "Generation failed".

marcusdev 157 days ago | |

Awesome, glad you like it! Thanks for the feedback. I've just bumped my Gemini API key limit, fingers crossed that fixes things for you.

jsnell 157 days ago |

The infinite grid is a cool idea, but the game as a whole did not feel very engaging. There was no way I was finishing even one full screen of this, which is the bare minimum threshold for getting any value from the infinite grid. I'm not a word search guy, but it feels like the idea might work better with a different puzzle type.

The drag to pan, hold-then-drag to mark felt really clumsy with a mouse. The hold delay is just too long. Maybe consider drag-with-left-button to mark, click/drag-with-right button to pan.

The word list seems odd, half the words I tried were rejected. You don't need many failures to accept a reasonable word to lose faith in the game. Is the idea that only the words at the bottom are in the dictionary? Doesn't feel like it can be, given it only shows about 20 words, is not scrollable in any way I can see, and many words not shown in that list were actually accepted.

dvh 157 days ago |

Lot of missing words like kit, sit. And wth is kinkajou? I also did word game many years ago, it took maybe 1 day to code but the rest of the week I've spent filtering out garbage from corpus (names, shortcuts, non-words, non-English words). You can use it: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dvhx/game-word-puzzle/refs...

marcusdev 157 days ago | |

You must have been playing the "Wild Animals" category. A Kinkajou is a tropical rainforest mammal according to Wikipedia :)

The 5 built-in word lists that you can play without signing up were generated by Gemini 3 Pro - there are a few obscure ones in there!

mpalmer 157 days ago |

I saw that "ape" was a valid word, found it diagonally, but it didn't register. Guessing I found an "accidental" ape. cool though!

Suppafly 156 days ago | |

I had a similar issue with "ant", except it was horizontal and the game refused to acknowledge I had found it. I'm wondering if it only registers the ones that it initially generates and doesn't double check when you select others or something. I did notice when you move it, it updated the list to reflect that there were two aardvark's so I'm not sure why it didn't recognize the 'ant' that I located.

marcusdev 156 days ago | |

Thanks for this! It was a tricky one to solve, but finding an "accidental" match now grants a point.

sh4rks 157 days ago | |

Ha. I read this comment and found the exact same diagonal "Ape"

StrangeSound 157 days ago |

This is really nice! I think it has a great aesthetic and works really well. Just a couple of thoughts:

- the long press feels a little bit too long on mobile. At least I think it is? I thought nothing had happened because my thumb was covering the active state of the letter that I pressed down on. Potentially a combo of the two

- you can "cheat" by moving the board and tracking when your word disappears

retropragma 157 days ago |

It's too easy to "cheat" by panning around until a word toggles in the list, effectively telling you which corner of the screen the word can be found in

badc0ffee 157 days ago |

I highlighted a word, it was added to the bottom and greyed-out, but the original word didn't disappear.

I'll see if I can repro.

badc0ffee 157 days ago | |

Actually it seems like duplicate words are listed, and only one gets crossed off.

johnnyo 157 days ago |

It’s not clear to me what the changing colors of the words mean as I scroll around?

djent 157 days ago |

The pulsing letters are both performance heavy and distracting. Firefox

marcusdev 156 days ago | |

Thanks for the feedback - fixed!