Show HN: A web version of Pips game (NYT domino game) | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A web version of Pips game (NYT domino game)

pipsgamer.com

38 pointskieojk20 comments

Hi everyone,

I’m an indie developer learning Next.js and a big fan of the NYT game Pips. Inspired by it, I built https://pipsgamer.com — a responsive web version of Pips with smooth gameplay on both desktop and mobile.

What makes this project different from NYT’s version is that you can play it infinitely under three difficulty levels: Easy / Medium / Hard.

This is the first time I’ve built a game. Along the way I ran into many difficulties: implementing the game logic, configuring the UI, matching layouts for small and large screens, etc. I spent many lonely nights and sometimes even doubted whether I could complete the whole project. After 24 days of persistent effort, the project is finally finished.

No signup required — just go and play. If you try it out I’d really appreciate your feedback: what you like, what bugs you see, what could be improved.

Thanks!

Open articleView on HN

One UX feature I wish existed on the NYT game that you should add here is that I wish I could organize my dominoes. E.g. I wish I could put all the pieces with a zero into part of my playing area.

I've about thought this too.

I'd be happy with a "highlight dominoes" picker. Ticking zero would highlight the dominoes with zero, then you could also tick four, and you'd be left with only pieces that satisfy both.

Ideally it highlights matches in the tray and on the playing field.

I'll try to see if I can implement your idea from the code level.

Cool! If you're taking feature requests, I'd love to see an endless mode. No idea how hard it would be to build while keeping puzzle quality high, haven't thought about it much.

Pips is easily my new favorite NYT game apart from the daily (full) Crossword. Forces me to use my brain in a way the other games don't. Would love to be able to play this more than once a day.

I was confused by the description of the green rule. Based on its behavior, I think it should be "the sum of dots in the region should equal this number". It's not "all dots must be the same". So the green and the blue are behaving the same?

The rule is based on the symbol, not the color. Ie, there is no green or blue rule.

Colors are random, not the rule. The label in the upper left corner is the rule

Great job! Congrats on shipping - I just played and it worked as designed.

Extremely minor nit: in the "how to play" example, on the far right, the rule is ">5" but the domino has a 1 and a 4. HTH

Thank you for your suggestion. Revise it immediately

> Revise it immediately

I've sure this was a typo, but it gave me a chuckle. Like, "thanks, now fix it!"

I know I'm preaching to the choir here but I'm really surprised by how bad the UX is in many of the NYT games. Manipulating the dominoes in Pips just feels awkward and buggy.

And I know making games is difficult, but 1. games are a really significant portion of their subscription income, 2. there's obviously a lot of talent working at the Times (looking at their data vis stuff for example) 3. these games are (deliberately) simple, so why not iterate a bit more on making the few moving parts feel good?

Like, I think there's competent developers working at the Times. And building a pleasant, robust version of these simple games for one of the most prestigious employers in the world seems like it would be a really interesting and stimulating job. So I'd expect better results.

Also: I think this looks great and that your version is actually a bit nicer to use. Well done!

They are all webviews (except the crossword) now, so they're limited to what they can figure out in JS/CSS. That said, it could definitely be better even within those constraints.

Spelling Bee UX got noticeably worse when they switched it. Little things, like if you switch in and out of the app (say, using the official hints page), it ignores your first tap now.

Jumping on this thread to also highlight my main NY Times Games gripe: the Wordle keyboard will double register the same letter if you tap a neighbouring letter straight after. It's like the tap target area grows briefly after tapping a letter.

Example, I'll type "HYPER" and end up with "HHPEE".

Ooh, haven't seen that one, but I'm usually being really careful typing in Wordle after accidentally blowing my >100d hard mode streak via a typo..

Thank you for your encouragement. I have been enriching the website's content around the theme of Domino Game these days. (But there are too few Domino games available online, and many of them are very similar)

I encountered a Pips puzzle in NYT once which didnt have a unique solution. This was very confusing as I was expecting these puzzles are curated and the designers would use tools to design unique and interesting puzzles.

Why is it not possible to drag already placed domino out of the puzzle?

Just click on the dominoes to out of the puzzle

Congrats on shipping! Just tried and one quick feedback: disable the pull to refresh.

Thanks for your suggestion, I'll adjust it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com