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Thank HN: The puzzle game I posted here 6 weeks ago got licensed by The Atlantic

(www.theatlantic.com)
976 points brgross | 2 comments | 08 Apr 25 15:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.399s | source
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brgross ◴[08 Apr 25 15:11 UTC] No.43622720[source]▶
I posted Bracket City to HN on February 24th and the game went live yesterday on The Atlantic (!)

The game will stay free to play (and not require logging in). Also, I'm still making all the puzzles!

HN provided the first real infusion of players that weren't my mom's friends. So thanks everyone.

FWIW The Atlantic's team is amazing and got this live exactly 2 weeks from when we signed the deal.

This happened quick and I feel very lucky. The HN community of solvers keeps me honest with much helpful technical and editorial feedback. I love it all -- here or at mayor@bracket.city

T[Tom who befriended a volleyball] HN

PS my original post! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43160542

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mk_stjames ◴[08 Apr 25 16:17 UTC] No.43623453[source]▶
My constructive crit:

I'd really like to be able to just answer the puzzle without answering any of the intermediate stages. It is a much more challenging feat to just hold it all in your head and then type out the one long answer than to answer the individual stages. It promotes some real mental modelling skills that way.

The game, played as-is, is almost no challenge at all. It just feels like busywork.

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1. NobodyNada ◴[08 Apr 25 16:42 UTC] No.43623748[source]▶
As soon as I saw "second rock from the", I knew the top-level answer was going to be "Venus". At first I felt frustrated that it wouldn't let me enter the solution, but if it had accepted that then I would have missed out on the rest of the puzzle. In retrospect, I felt like having to work backwards from "Venus" and "sun" to figure out the lower-level clues was much more interesting then if it had just let me skip those clues.
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2. drilbo ◴[08 Apr 25 19:48 UTC] No.43625760[source]▶
exactly this! a whole lot of people above suggesting stripping away all the fun