Ludum Dare #45compo
Words From Nothing
--- Objective ---
Start with 'NOTHING' and find 'EVERYTHING'.
--- Rules ---
Drag a horizontal or vertical line anywhere on the screen.
A random word that fits into the crossword will appear.
The line must intersect with the existing crossword at least once.
Nothing happens if no word can be found that fits into the crossword.
Words must be at least three characters long.
Edit: I forgot to mention that you can also select pieces to reroll them.
--- Controls ---
Click and drag the left mouse button to create new words.
Click and drag the right mouse button to move the camera.
Use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.
Comments18
tohubohu8 Oct 2019, 10:10
Hey, that's pretty cool! Must be a fairly efficient lookup to generate these words so quickly. Well done! I'll admit, I still haven't found everything, but I did find "thelitises", and then I had to look up the definition... LOL. Cheers on taking this theme in the same general direction, and congrats on the submission!
Skyeward8 Oct 2019, 11:35
This is the best idea for a game I've seen this entire jam - I couldn't finish it but it's such a great concept.
Akusan8 Oct 2019, 11:39
Pretty interesting game. nice use of procedural generation. I can't seem to find everything. Is there a trick to it? great concept though.
coffeedrinkers8 Oct 2019, 11:41
+1, best idea and great execution! Congrats!
boats8 Oct 2019, 11:47
Like the others, I'm having no luck finishing it. I do think there's lots of strategy involved in this though, being able to re-roll letters seems incredibly useful but I wasn't able to make much use of it. Perfect execution of the theme though, I love the idea.
NekuSoul8 Oct 2019, 12:07
@akusan @boats
Finding 'everything' is indeed not an easy task. My recommendation is to a create a few vertical words, making heavy use of rerolling those words and once those letters line up to spell 'everything' try to create a horizontal word and reroll until it hits everything. Getting the more rare letters like 'y' and 'v' in place also really helps to reroll into the correct word.
Finding 'everything' is indeed not an easy task. My recommendation is to a create a few vertical words, making heavy use of rerolling those words and once those letters line up to spell 'everything' try to create a horizontal word and reroll until it hits everything. Getting the more rare letters like 'y' and 'v' in place also really helps to reroll into the correct word.
Frank Gevaerts8 Oct 2019, 15:17
Nice! I played on linux, and build works fine for me. My main issue was that I didn't figure out you could re-roll a word (or parts of it), I had to read comments here to find that out, and that's kind of essential. Maybe mention it in the description?
I suspect there's not much replay value in this, but for an LD game that doesn't matter.
One issue though: with scrollwheels there are two possible directions for zooming in, and I disagree with you about which is the correct one :)
I suspect there's not much replay value in this, but for an LD game that doesn't matter.
One issue though: with scrollwheels there are two possible directions for zooming in, and I disagree with you about which is the correct one :)
TheMiSta928 Oct 2019, 15:41
Super interesting concept, quite hard to get to the point you want to get. Sounds a little to harsh in my opinion, but still great game!
NekuSoul8 Oct 2019, 15:43
@frank-gevaerts Huh, seems like I accidentally deleted the line of text that explains how rerolling works when I made a modification to the rules. Oops. I'll put up warning for the missing rule. Thanks for the info.
Narffy8 Oct 2019, 16:50
Very good concept and theme interpretation, very good job !
Benji Kershenbaum8 Oct 2019, 19:33
Good twist on the theme. Couldn't finish it, but still fun!
Lewis C. Parr8 Oct 2019, 19:56
Really cool, good job!
GeruGames8 Oct 2019, 20:41
lmaooo this game was funny, good job!
Matt Rix8 Oct 2019, 21:18
So good! I tried to come up with a word game myself starting with the letters "NOTHING" on the board, but didn't even consider randomly generating the words as you draw lines, genius!
The game was incredibly hard until I discovered the reroll rule, which made it stil hard but at least bearable.
At first I thought the game would only give me "everything" if there were no other viable words that fit, but that turned out to not be the case.
I came up with a way to solve it using reroll that was still tricky, but at least got it done pretty quick after that.
Proof: https://i.imgur.com/noIBFO5.png
Here was my way to approach the solution (spoilers): I would spell a long word, and then with any E/V/R I would reroll 3 letter words around them until I got EVE or EVER, then turn that into EVERY and extend that to a 10 letter word and hope to get "EVERYTHING". I got "EVERYPLACE" and "EVERYWHERE" a bunch of times first. The same thing would be possible working backwards from "THING" but it's harder (you also end up with words like UNCLOTHING).
Oh and here's what my board looked like right before I beat it (again, spoilers): https://i.imgur.com/PeizHMv.png
One bit of feedback is that it would be nice if the reroll went through all the possible letters in order instead of truly random like it is now. Sometimes you have to click a lot to get to a letter you know is valid.
Anyway, that's about it. Just wanted to say I thought this game was great and it's a really unique experience.
The game was incredibly hard until I discovered the reroll rule, which made it stil hard but at least bearable.
At first I thought the game would only give me "everything" if there were no other viable words that fit, but that turned out to not be the case.
I came up with a way to solve it using reroll that was still tricky, but at least got it done pretty quick after that.
Proof: https://i.imgur.com/noIBFO5.png
Here was my way to approach the solution (spoilers): I would spell a long word, and then with any E/V/R I would reroll 3 letter words around them until I got EVE or EVER, then turn that into EVERY and extend that to a 10 letter word and hope to get "EVERYTHING". I got "EVERYPLACE" and "EVERYWHERE" a bunch of times first. The same thing would be possible working backwards from "THING" but it's harder (you also end up with words like UNCLOTHING).
Oh and here's what my board looked like right before I beat it (again, spoilers): https://i.imgur.com/PeizHMv.png
One bit of feedback is that it would be nice if the reroll went through all the possible letters in order instead of truly random like it is now. Sometimes you have to click a lot to get to a letter you know is valid.
Anyway, that's about it. Just wanted to say I thought this game was great and it's a really unique experience.
Gustav Andersson8 Oct 2019, 21:45
Never seen anything like this, interesting and very hard :)
farrahchkb9 Oct 2019, 19:47
It's funny because I had exactly the same idea at the beginning ! I wanted to make a game which would started with the word nothing ! But I'm not a native English so it was a little bit complicated.. Great job ! I absolutely love iiit
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog: