The idea is neat. The UI didn't really work for me in a couple of ways:
- The modal input mechanism feels kind of clumsy. An extra click is needed for the most common move, and the buttons are somehow too inconspicuous. At least I kept forgetting to make the use/save choice for powerups.
- The path of terrains/actions taken is really hard to read. I think it's due to overlaying the two kinds of icons on top of each other. It'd probably be better if the terrain was shown as-is, but the action type was shrunk to maybe half or third, placed in a corner, and with an opaque background.
I agree with both GP's comments. I think the path is confusing because it's shown like this:
A>>>>
and when the opponent makes another move:
BA>>>>
So the arrows say "this is moving forward in time", and point to the right (which is usually where you add things). But then the new moves are added on the left, behind the arrows.
I think the powerups seem to be bait here. I've won all but one of the last 12ish games by never taking any powerups and simply waiting for the opponent to reveal themselves by taking them. The only time I used a powerup was to pounce onto a bomb when I suspected the enemy was close and about to take it.
The powerups are often useless unless you already know the position of the opponent, which you most likely won't if they don't reveal themselves by picking up one of their own or clearly move towards them. And when you take a powerup it's easy for an invisible opponent to quickly track you down and pounce you from an unknown/ambiguous direction without you having much opportunity to react.
If you get a sense the enemy are generally moving towards a non-bomb powerup by the tiles they step on, you can even prepare for it by simply staying around the powerup tile and pounce them the moment they pick it up, without exposing yourself to any risk if you are wrong.
If both players avoid powerups I suspect it mostly would become a game of chance (unless one player carelessly steps upon a combination of tiles that reveals their position).
The way powerups permanently changes the board by marking the tiles is a good idea in theory, but right now it adds another huge weakness to using a powerup. Your opponent will be able to very effectively track you even AFTER you used the powerups by using the marked tiles in your vicinity. I would change it, maybe by only giving the information about the marked tiles to the player using the powerup.
I would also make it harder to move onto tiles you've stepped on before, to increase the ability to narrow down an opponent over time even if they try to remain hidden.
Powerups are attractive bait for new players. However hanging out near a bomb is dangerous. As is being too predictable letting the enemy know where you are.
The vision powerup displays both player powerup, if used right away. But if you wait you can see the other player with out the other player seeing you.
The game is mostly about tracking, and often you can pinpoint another player without using vision, or they do something like pounce of take a power up. So it's still a test of skill.
The tiles that are permanently changed, which is a disadvantage to the person blowing the bomb, but the general idea is you only trigger the bomb when you are sure the enemy is close.
After finishing the tutorial, for 10+ games I was under the false impression that a powerup is immediately used at the spot where you acquire it. I think if powerups are named "weapons", it should be less likely to cause this fusion for future players, because the word "weapon" implies that you can carry it around.
Love this! I think I just got pounced by a fellow HN reader because we were both using the same strategy.
I think a leaderboard - or at least a record of your wins/losses would be cool. The extra click to confirm a move isn't off-putting for me, but I think that double-clicking/tapping on a square should be enough to move. The UI for using the powerups is a bit confusing too. And, being picky, "This let's you move..." should be "This lets you move..." in the instructions.
These are all minor points, though, and I've bookmarked the game because I think it's a fantastic concept and really enjoy playing it.
One pedantic note, hopefully helpful: "this let's you move further" should be "this lets you move further" -- there is no apostrophe in "lets" unless it's a contraction of "let us".
> there is no apostrophe in "lets" unless it's a contraction of "let us".
It is not obvious that the form let's is a contraction of "let us". For one thing, it's not generally possible to expand it into the notional "uncontracted form"; if the form were a contraction, that would be easy to do.
Well, because you can't. This is like asking why the word for "dog" isn't "grup". It just isn't, and thinking there might be a reason is an error. That's not how language works. But in a different world, the word for "dog" might be different.
"Let us have a cup of tea" isn't something that anyone would say (outside of a demand for permission), and if you say it, at best you'll get very funny looks.
Here's what CGEL has to say (page 935):
> Syntactically, this construction indicates that the specialisation of let has been taken a significant step further. The 's here is not replaceable by us [...] It seems clear, rather, that let and 's have fused syntactically as well as phonologically, and are no longer analysable as verb + object: they form a single word which functions as marker of the 1st person inclusive imperative construction.
Not at all a nonsense word situation, as you said above, though. Also not sure I would say cgel > oed for authoritative sources of meanings of words in English... But you do you.
> Not at all a nonsense word situation, as you said above, though.
Where did I say that?
> Also not sure I would say cgel > oed for authoritative sources of meanings of words in English... But you do you.
There are a couple of problems with this:
- CGEL is not a source for the meaning of words; it's a description of the grammar of English. But that's fine here, because "how many words is let's?" is a grammatical question.
- The OED is a source for the meaning of words, making it a bad choice for grammatical questions, which are tangential to its purpose.
- The OED also deals extensively with the historical usage of words, even when that usage is not possible in the modern language. You have to be careful.
- You haven't cited the OED. Your link goes to the unrelated "Oxford Learner's Dictionaries". The OED is at least a name with immense prestige; the Oxford Learner's Dictionaries is not at all the same thing.
If it could have multiple players (even teams!) and a "spectate after death" mode, I could see this being a remote game night staple like generals.io.
Other ideas
- a leaderboard
- achievements like "win without getting a powerup" or "win by moving not pouncing"
- limited emotes like "well played" or "you got lucky" or "whoops"
- offer to rematch
Right now it seems to be dropping messages a lot. Played a game where I had no opportunity to do anything for a minute ("<opponent> is thinking") and then it just goes to me being revealed due to not moving. Happened several times.
pounce.sh/?replay=2716316456
Edit: Nevermind, the bug is entirely different: The UI doesn't update unless you hover over something! Even replays don't advance unless you e.g. hover over the buttons at the bottom. Firefox 99.0.1 on desktop here.
Edit 2: Separate note, you could have the URL change to the replay URL upon finishing a game. Almost pasted the wrong one above.
Edit 3: Ok, server is probably also overloaded, as this game the page was mostly frozen despite my "hover over random UI elements" trick. And then it completely broke several seconds after I tried playing a move (it appears to be stuck in an endless loop - can't even right click the page): https://i.imgur.com/dPf27pq.png
Nice game, but the server may be overloaded right now.
It is possible to be in 2 games at once (and losing both).
A bug made my game end as if the opponent had quit, I went back to the menu and started another one. Made one or 2 moves and then I was back in the game I had just quit, where my opponent was still playing.
Of course I was AFK for 1 turn (playing the other game) so my position was revealed. Then I was switched back to the other game where I had also appeared AFK for a turn.
I noticed that playing with a small grid to keep track of possible enemy positions on each turn is immensely helpful (kind of like flagging squares in minesweeper) so I hacked together this little tool to do that from another browser window: https://g12x.net/pounce-sh-helper/
Something I noticed when I was sat on the main page for a while in one tab while doing other stuff in other tabs - it eventually told me I was disconnected and asked me to reconnect. Have you considered using a library like socket.io or something along those lines that already is able to deal with the reconnection logic with little additional effort required implementation-wise?
Thanks! I have a lot more ideas of where to take this but wanted to see if there was interest before going all out into it. I'm excited to keep building
I love this. It works great on mobile. It's inspiring, seems like something that can be put together without too much tech, but requires some thinking to design properly. I really enjoyed the puzzle aspect of figuring out your opponent's location based on their movement history.
Im sure the dev work that went into this was fun and skill-building and enlightening, and im a huge fan of indie multiplayer in general, but stealth games like this have never really worked for me.
Overall, the multiplayer experience was seamless, the ui is a bit offputting, and the game itself feels like a non-starter:
moving in steps is less fun than free movement, so if you have turn based movement you need a secondary goal or some kind of resource generation
1v1 puts more pressure on players
hidden opponent = no clear goal at start of game
My ideal version of the game would have:
larger lobbies
timer for turns instead of sequential (or even better, an action point bar that fills up in real time)
drops as money for a shop instead of straight powerups
make movement a single click (remove confirmation)
This is a lot of fun, and I've been playing off and on since it was posted yesterday. I would like to offer a humble observation, which is that games with two laser power-ups can lead to a bit of a stalemate. I just finished such a game, and neither of us went for the lasers. We each danced around waiting for the other person to grab one and reveal their position. Reading some of the comments here, I think that "experienced" players in general are winning games by loitering near the power-ups instead of grabbing them.
Just had a bug where I was in two separate games at once against different opponents. Perhaps a race during matchmaking? It then switched between the two games when it became my turn but when it was my turn in both, switching to the second caused my timer on the first to elapse since ai couldn't switch back to it after moving in the second game.
With a little work, this bug could metamorphose a feature: multiple simultaneous games!
Same here, not sure what happened. Maybe a corruption of the player state database, or maybe I hit reload after a game hung. Seeing the timer for the other player would be helpful, that way you know when to give up and reload.
The bot isn't too bright. I picked up a powerup (which gave away my location to the opponent) and decided to use it immediately (it was an eye). Turns out, the bot was right next to me. I thought for sure I had lost, but surprisingly it moved somewhere else instead of killing me.
haha that is very satisfying. Also yea some things I decided to cut out of the tutorial because I didn't want it to be too long. I will add help screen which allows you to see all the rules anytime you want
As a fan of hidden movement board games, I definitely like this. With some of the feedback/suggestions other people have already noted, this could end up being really great. I definitely think the control could use a bit of work.
I feel like grabbing a power up should grant you an extra turn. Or just not reveal your position. Which of course requires not revealing that the item has been picked up to the other player.
Given that the message system that the game uses over websocket is pretty easily understood, I wonder how long until someone were to make an AI for this game
It is a hidden movement game, akin to Captain Sonar. There is a square grid of tiles, and you move around it in the typical 8 directions. Each player is told the color of tile their opponent moved to (you cannot reuse a square). If you move into your opponent, you win.
You have the ability to "pounce", jumping like three squares, but doing so will announce your exact location, so if you miss you will be dangerously exposed. There are also bonus pickup on the map with various powerful effects, but picking them up exposes you, same as a pounce.
I presume your company is using Cisco Umbrella DNS? (It's blocked for me too, and that's why. Umbrella has a "feature" that automatically blocks any newly-seen domains for the first few hours of their lifetime. Presumably they do some extra scanning of said sites, and assuming they're safe unblock them after a few hours.)
After playing it more, I realized that the tiles that "exploded" are really unclear. They are just hard to look at and they give nothing back in terms of gameplay. The knowledge that a tile exploded in the past gives you no information.
- The modal input mechanism feels kind of clumsy. An extra click is needed for the most common move, and the buttons are somehow too inconspicuous. At least I kept forgetting to make the use/save choice for powerups.
- The path of terrains/actions taken is really hard to read. I think it's due to overlaying the two kinds of icons on top of each other. It'd probably be better if the terrain was shown as-is, but the action type was shrunk to maybe half or third, placed in a corner, and with an opaque background.