Shuffle Hustle

by mgmarlow

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.22

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.20

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.13

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.26

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.52

Play at https://www.shuffle-hustle.com/.

Enter as many words as you can using only the displayed letters. Once the timer runs out, you're toast! Luckily every word you submit gives you a tiny bit more breathing room.

What's the highest score you can reach?

- The game is over once the countdown timer hits 0.
- Each new word extends the countdown timer, longer words buy you more time.
- The letter bank shuffles randomly every 10 seconds.
- No duplicate words allowed!
- You can use the same letter more than once when submitting words.

CHANGELOG

- fix: Words must be 2 or more letters
- fix: Restrict # of toasts to 3
- copy: Rules clarification
- fix: Swap dictionary to aspell
- refactor: Far saner layout

Comments20

LDJam user 3037162 Oct 2022, 00:32

Cool game!

LDJam user 2930462 Oct 2022, 08:55

Nice game. Did you register a domain name for it?

LDJam user 257810author2 Oct 2022, 17:26

@olivieryc I did indeed! The game isn't super embeddable, so I wanted to make sure it didn't feel like I was linking to a sketchy site :p

Nicholas Maddalena3 Oct 2022, 02:37

I really dig this one! Extremely easy to pick-up and play. I went poking around in the source code to see how you generate each batch of letters - I appreciate that you always throw in a few uncommon ones just to make each group a little trickier

dyguests3 Oct 2022, 03:41

这是个啥？

:(

I am not good in English.

It's a very rewarding game, but I don't get a single point. :(

(Write this by google translate.)

LDJam user 2366513 Oct 2022, 03:55

Very fun! It wasn't initially obvious that you can re-use letters (a lot of these word games only let you use each letter once), and it would be nice to note in the instructions that longer words buy more time, but otherwise a very cool word game!

LDJam user 257810author3 Oct 2022, 03:59

@lancival Agreed! That's been a common source of feedback. Thanks for playing!

LDJam user 2366513 Oct 2022, 04:34

LDJam user 2374133 Oct 2022, 09:00

Nice game, where did you get the work database from? it seems to allow some "non-words", but very cool.

Would be good to have access to some more vowels and less constants like x and z.

Great submission :smile:

mdotedot3 Oct 2022, 16:12

solid game. as a non-native-english speaker I am not a high ranking player. But I manage to get 50 seconds at one time .....

LDJam user 257810author3 Oct 2022, 23:48

@haydads right now it's using the one that ships with macos, /usr/share/dict/words

pianoman3734 Oct 2022, 00:30

Very creative concept! You should really add a leaderboard. That would really boost the competitiveness.

LDJam user 2431936 Oct 2022, 10:40

The idea is good but due to randomness, it's rare to get decent words. There's only one time I could use all 5 letters.
Hmmm.... I think previous Ludum Dare theme fits this game.

MerlinPerlin6 Oct 2022, 20:53

im so bad at this type of games but i think you did an great job, also with implementing the theme :) some music would be nice but over all, great concept and neat design :) well done

cassowary21 Oct 2022, 17:59

Pretty fun, I'm a big fan of word games. The interface is very visually clean-looking! It's so satisfying to manage to work in the J or other weird letter, and I appreciate that the game congratulates you for getting long(er) words. :slight_smile: I think it might be nice if it showed you how much extra time you got for each word -- I wasn't sure if longer words gave more time or if I should just be spamming as many words as i could, haha.

waffleworksgames21 Oct 2022, 19:15

This game was surprisingly addictive! Admittedly, I'm not the best at word games, but this game made me keep wanting to replay it after I lost. I'm probably gonna play it a few more times after I finish this comment! I really liked that you made it possible to use repeated letters, I think that adds a lot of depth to the game. I'd be interested to see how the gameplay would change if there were six letters instead? Sometimes it felt like there weren't enough possible words in the 5 letters to meaningfully improve the time bank, but maybe I'm just not good enough :P Great work!

OadT21 Oct 2022, 19:26

I am the worst player when it comes to these scrabble like games, but somehow it was still somehow funny for me! Only wished you could also click on the tiles to insert a word instead of using the keyboard

Harksa21 Oct 2022, 19:59

Oh man, I'm not good at all why that kind of game. I only made 23 points max :cry:
English isn't my first langage either so yeah, it wasn't easy at all lol.

I liked the idea and I wish there were more letters to work with because it get hard when you have uncommon letters. Maybe an easy mode ?

Anyway, it was still fun ! I'll show this game to a friend, I'm sure he will enjoy more than I did !

Keep up the good work :smile:

ditam21 Oct 2022, 20:04

A very cool entry, I'll probably go back right now to try to beat my high score of 70. (edits: 102. 130!) Simple but fun.

I'm happy I could give you your 20th review, you surely deserve to be rated!

cassowary22 Oct 2022, 20:48

:sunglasses:

Other games by @mgmarlow

compo

twicoban

★3.42

LD50