timujin 2021-04-25 17:05
Quite a classic game. Doesn't even need a client, to be honest, can be played with just a web browser.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Wiki Vortex
By impbox
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 48 | 4.09 | 27 | |
| Fun | 103 | 3.92 | 27 | |
| Innovation | 65 | 4.08 | 27 | |
| Theme | 45 | 4.30 | 27 |
Quite a classic game. Doesn't even need a client, to be honest, can be played with just a web browser.
@timujin yeah you could play it with a web-browser and a notepad for sure, all this does it kind of enforce the rules and gives you some direction with the quests.
Really clever use of the theme! I like the structure that the quests provide. Nice job!
very cool interpretation of the theme! The restrictions are really neat; I did my first run and got all three objectives, but then I realized I had sped through it and knew absolutely _nothing_ about "Milorad PetroviA‡". There are a few wikipedia games I know of, but this is the first time one has encouraged me to read and learn about obscure topics instead of just clicking links blindly; very nicely done. I will strategize better on my next run!
@pancelor thanks so much, lovely to hear! <3 Yes, it's very tricky to find your way back if you don't learn about your starting page well. I made that mistake a few times during my playtesting.
Really interesting take on the theme. The game itself is pretty fun.
While I have seen similar things before this was still super fun and enjoyable experience. The quests could have been a little harder since I have finished with a lot of lives left. I will probably remember this entry for a while so that speaks volume about how cool it is.
@listonos the random nature of the Quests can give quite varied difficulty, I was thinking of adding the ability to draw more quests if you finish them all with plenty of steps left for more points or something.
Among the most time I've spent with a game jam game! It reminds me of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon. I suck at trivia so I didn't beat the game, but it was fun to learn random stuff and find random links between things. I also chuckled a couple of times like when I tried to go to the homepage as a wildcard but couldn't as I'd already been there. Or when your game told me off for trying to search for the goal in the search box lol.
I'm not really sure how the game can be improved upon... Well, actually, when I went to full screen, the side-panel window was out of sight, so I had to play in windowed mode. Also, I guess a find-in-page function might be helpful? Also not sure how your game exactly determines that you've reached a goal, but the Wikipedia page for Poetry didn't award me the goal "Poem", whereas the page for "Grumman Golfstream I" did award me the goal "aircraft". I was also on my last life though, so not sure if it's an issue with that or not.
Aside from that, as simple as it is, the game feels really complete and something you could hand to non-gamers to play with as-is.
Brilliant use of the theme. On my best attempt, I finished all three quests but didn't manage to return to the original article (my start was Ambondro mahabo, and unfortunately I had already carelessly used mammal).
Greetings from a fellow Wikipedia game creator! Woah this was really slick. I spent a solid 90 minutes on this, which is WAY more than I spend on most Ludum Dare entries. It took me 32 steps to get from Cyril Bassett, through monarch, novel, and poem, and back again.
I found myself really wanting a search feature, and I ended up going to the pages in my browser and using ctrl+f over there. I also admit to using Wikipedia's "what links here" feature to cheat, but I feel like that was part of the fun of solving the puzzle.
Overall this was REALLY well done. Amazing job.
@kevinworkman awesome! glad you made it back! I specifically didn't include Ctrl+F so you'd actually read the page and learn about it rather than quickly trying to find the exit, I know if I have access to ctrl+f I just skip over things. But I guess it could be a player option to disable it or not for people who just wanna rush through. I didn't know about "what links here", that could be useful for detecting start pages that would be too hard to solve. Thanks for playing!
Clever use of the theme. The game concept itself is well established, but this is a good execution of it—the randomization is nice, as is the fact that you don’t have to click all the way through to a given target word if it’s linked to from the page you land on. Well done!
@mahalis thanks, I only discovered it was already a thing after day 1 of the compo, so I started to shift my design away from the existing Wikirace implementations by adding the quests. I wanted to make something that gets you to learn and discover interesting things and use your knowledge to make logically connections. I liked the idea of a path you couldn't retrace and I used the quests to get the player away from the starting page so going back wasn't so easy. So hopefully it's different enough from other wiki games to be innovative and interesting. The "Quest" words you don't have to hit the exact page, eg for "Mammal" any mammal will do, or for Film any film will do, it uses the Wikipedia category system to match them.
I like the game concept and design! Another perfect yet genius explaination of the theme.
Very nicely done, looking forwards to more challenges!
5 stars!
Very interesting concept! I included it in my compilation video series of a bunch of LDJAM games! https://youtu.be/5_7QHLz41l4
@jupiter-hadley thanks Jupi! It's probably not the best kind of game for your videos as the session length is quite long, but thanks for showing it =)
Excellent game! It was way more fun than I thought - I was late to a lecture desperately trying to return to an obscure type of worm (I forgot its name, but it began with A and was ~15 letters long). I failed. But afterwards, with a much easier article, I managed to finish it with only ten steps:
Screenshot 2021-04-27 134916.png
All in all, it was very fun. My only criticism is the wildly varying difficulty - maybe add a difficulty slider, counting the amount of pages linking to the starting one determining it? Other than that, excellent entry!
Nice creation! Quite tricky to navigate, but rewards the player for taking their time and thinking about likely routes. Enjoyable and an innovative mechanic!
@frogman thanks for sharing your screenshot! I love seeing these! it's so cool looking at the path people take. Yeah the wildly varying difficulty is something I'd like to improve in future versions. It's very hard when the starting page is very obscure.
This was really fun!
Ah I've played the "Wikipedia Game", as it is so creatively named in my circles, before. But not this comfortable and automated as this. Had a lot of fun with it and will come back to play it again for sure!
This is so interesting!
Nice use of the theme! I like how it's not strict on finding the exact article.
This was extremely clever! Not to mention, a highly unique take on the theme and probably what makes these jams so much fun to check out: entries like this.
Very creative way of adapting the theme. Like the simplicity and the way it requires to think to move forward. I don't regret the time i spent ^^
I was looking for this game. And it's really nice. Ok the main concept is known but the way you adapt it is really good, the idea of the quests is really good. Your app work fine, it was really fun to play. To improve it, I woud like to have a way to change the language. Good work
Great implementation of the classic Wikipedia game ! :smile: Really fits the theme. I prefer playing with your version with the enforced rules than with a notepad or a piece of paper, good job !
I don't feel like you invented something new, cause the game was already a thing just using the web browser, BUT it's a great idea to make an UI that allow you to explicit the rules and add some variations to the original game! So for that : Good Job !