Letterpress by Loren Brichter of Atebits

tehwebguy 13 years ago |

This game rules.

It's fun, it's easy to play and it's got the kind of interface that feels very simple but actually has insane attention to detail.

Edit: You don't have to use only contiguous letters, if you've played a lot of Scramble that may take some getting used to.

nicholassmith 13 years ago |

It's one hell of a good looking app and according to an article on The Verge it apparently clocked in at under 7k LOC. Looking forward to seeing what comes out of Atebits over the coming years.

fieldforceapp 13 years ago |

I really like this take on asynchronous gameplay UI, it's tough get the "glance" aspect of the UI correct and yet make it compelling. The "Draw Something" problem where you're drowning in partially played games perhaps led to it's demise, a victim of the UI's inability to scale?

(Sigh... should have spent more time studying design / HCI in school...)

spartango 13 years ago | |

No one says you can't study it even now (except perhaps your calendar)... One classic starting point is "The Design of Everyday Things"[1].

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d...

mnicole 13 years ago | |

The [free] Coursera HCI course is going on right now, too.

wmeredith 13 years ago |

Good lord the App Store search is lame. I get three results when searching for "Letterpress" and this game isn't among them. In fact, I just spent about 5 minutes trying to find this game at all and I can't. Boo.

twootten 13 years ago | |

I think it takes a little while for new additions to get indexed into the search. Links will take you there though...

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/letterpress-word-game/id5266...

whalesalad 13 years ago |

Very fun/cool UI. It's surprisingly reminiscent of Metro, err, Windows 8 Style UI. You could wrap an iPhone in some clumsy metal/plastic Windows phone wrapper from a year ago and you'd have no idea what OS was powering this.

MehdiEG 13 years ago | |

I haven't tried the game yet but at first sight, it seems to be heavily inspired by Meego Harmattan / Symbian Belle - a beautifully designed UI (at least in its Meego implementation) that unfortunately never went anywhere due to Nokia killing both Meego and Symbian before it was even released.

haraball 13 years ago |

Very fun and beautiful game, just tried it out. I also like the solution that you can play up to 2 games for free, and then you can pay for it to be able to play more at the same time.

masklinn 13 years ago | |

A very similar model to Outwitters's (https://itunes.apple.com/app/outwitters/id432969074?mt=8)

reiichiroh 13 years ago | | |

Unfortunately, Outwitters was a sales disaster: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/10/outwitters-sales-disas...

Steko 13 years ago | | |

Outwitters main problem was the teams were functionally identical so there was little point in paying for them. Yes the uber units were different but in actual gameplay these weren't used at all. If there were other noncosmetic differences, this wasn't apparent to me as a casual player.

I guess I spent around $20 in Hero Academy but I spent $0 for Outwitters, a game of similar polish and quality.

masklinn 13 years ago | | |

> Yes the uber units were different but in actual gameplay these weren't used at all.

That's not completely true, but it is true that they're not hugely common to use: because of their price, misusing them will likely break you, whereas using them does not usually have an absolutely critical impact on the game. They may be slightly more easy to use in pair games.

> If there were other noncosmetic differences, this wasn't apparent to me as a casual player.

Nope, there aren't, probably to avoid the balance issues of e.g. Hero Academy.

masklinn 13 years ago | | |

Damn, hadn't seen this, makes me sad. Outwitters is a very nice game (and for such a heavily networked game, freemium makes sense as you need to build a big community for playing to be interesting)

user-id 13 years ago | | |

Loren should do relatively well out of this game though.

chrislloyd 13 years ago |

I love the app, but this isn't how you win friends on the internet: http://cl.ly/image/0Y401a2D1c2R ;)

wmblaettler 13 years ago | |

I am sure it uses a standard dictionary such as SOWPODS, which excludes proper nouns among other things.

verisimilidude 13 years ago |

I'm going to love this game right up until someone creates a cheating app/site.

jowiar 13 years ago | |

The game is far more strategy-dependant than vocabulary-dependant. The word list comes nowhere near being exhausted on a given board within a game.

Now, is it possible to write an AI? Sure, and actually, an AI-contest for this game would be a whole lot of fun. It's not simply "generate words" - you could give everyone the word list and the game would still play well.

greenmountin 13 years ago | | |

Not true, for example I've been ruining the game for the past couple hours with a quick (greedy) AI.

Play a couple rounds with words like 'tetrasyllabics', where you completely reverse their blocks, and people just give up :(

Actually, I'm hoping there's someone else out there doing this too, because then I'll need to throw in the blocking logic.

tehwebguy 13 years ago | |

Sounds like a good weekend project to me!

verisimilidude 13 years ago | | |

True! Let me fix that.

I'm going to love this game right up until someone else creates a cheating app/site.

Seriously though, cheating apps totally ruin these word games. I remember loving Scrabulous (remember that name?) right up until everyone figured out how to cheat. Then the game just became tedious. Hopefully the tile-taking mechanic in this game will introduce enough strategy to keep play interesting for a while.

kip_ 13 years ago | | |

But it's not just about who can play a few 10-12 letter words. You need to use the corners and the squares around them to deny your opponent from quickly flipping them back to their color.

speg 13 years ago |

I was playing this game all afternoon. Ten I came home and turned my phone off silent. Wow. The attention to detail in the sound effects want me to go back to my review and give it another star.