I like the idea and I would play it, but the system of coming up with questions and then having to answer them in order to narrow down the options is unintuitive. Can I see a picture of the bird? Can I hear its call? Can I guess species and see categories get narrowed down? Those aren't necessarily what you need to add, but they're what I'm used to for daily games, and what I expected when I clicked the link.
Thank you. I was overjoyed at the initial response and surprised and disheartened to see it get flagged. I emailed HN's moderators to get clarification and see if there's anything I could have done better.
Great question. It picks a random book first (out of the 66 non-Deuterocanonical books (so far)) and then a random group of 3 back-to-back verses from that book. That way it's not weighted towards books with more of verses, which I wanted to avoid. It doesn't try to equalize between old/new testament.
Based on my initial audience, it's definitely not common. The Christians I know have different levels of familiarity with the books of the Bible.
Personally, I know Genesis/Exodus, Psalms, and the Gospels well. I can recognize Epistles on sight, but identifying the exact one is really just a guessing game. Most everything else I am not familiar with and will take me a while to guess.
I think that's why people have enjoyed it so far, because of the tradeoff of getting a verse you recognize (so you can guess the book quickly) or getting an unfamiliar verse (so you get to expand your familiarity with the Bible).
Perhaps I should make it clearer that correctly identifying the book on the first try is not the expectation. Maybe I will add a clarification that the goal is "as few guesses as possible" or maybe "as few guesses as you can".
It's quite a variable challenge. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not. (Usually it's not.) I appreciate your feedback.
*Despite them both being in the same section. Oops.
Thank you so much for noticing. I didn't even know there was a difference between Orthodox/Catholic and Protestant canons until a week after the site was live.
I spent a decent amount of time trying to add the Deuterocanonical books. Ultimately I put it on hold, because I was worried that adding those books would make a challenging game even harder (at least for my initial audience of 20 family and friends). I also wondered if adding those books would put off any Protestant visitors... but I see their omission has caught your attention, that's Orthodox 1, Protestant 0. I'll find an elegant way to work them in.
And I never thought of adding an RSS feed! I'll add that to the todo!
Thank you! I've noticed that a lot of other well-loved "daily" puzzle games are more elegant in terms of game design (Wordle, Bandle, LoLdle are some of my favorites) so I'm a bit worried that the current design is a little flat/boring. I've been trying to brainstorm ways to make it more interesting without making it too challenging or unintuitive.
I'm working on a text-based softball league simulator where you forcibly enlist your friends and family to join your co-ed softball team. You play as their manager/coach/fellow player.
Every aspect of the games are narrated in real time so you know what's going on. I'm still in the prototype stage and I've seen some pretty hilarious interactions already.
I am a real Discord customer who is actively looking for an alternative due to how terrible the performance is on my M1 MacBook and on my gaming PC. I'm just one person—I'm not claiming to represent the 'average' customer. But I am part of the average.
Hey Matt! I've been a fan of Ambiphone for a while and I see your comments on HN surprisingly often. I've been trying to build a different web audio player with inspiration taken from yours. I haven't figured out the screen off audio thing, so thank you so much for sharing this demo!!!