Ripple, a puzzle game about 2nd and 3rd order effects

 (ripplegame.app)

137 points | by mooreds 20 hours ago

25 comments

  • jrowen 14 hours ago
    Idk the intended demographic but it felt too easy or even heavy-handed. Three of the four options in each round sound like "and everyone lived happily ever after." Only one sounds like something that would happen in real life and continue the story.
  • HauntingPin 15 hours ago
    This is cool but it needs to be bingeable to really make it big. I don't think this works as a Wordle once a day kind of thing. I was going to send it to a non-tech friend who'd love it, but decided against it once I saw the 23 hour timer. She would've hated me.
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  • dzink 11 hours ago
    The time delay is a dark pattern, the questions are too easy, and the login for leaderboard would makes sense if users could do longer question sequences with escalating difficulty. I would do this as a tree of possible consequences instead - let people share a red path most people would choose and a green path that should be chosen as the desirable outcome. See what shows up.
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  • noduerme 14 hours ago
    For the 18th Amendment, we can probably mostly agree on what happened. But it only works because the wrong answers are very obviously wrong (and virtually impossible). But that forces you into answering along the path which is clearly not as wrong, even though it's full of vague sweeping generalizations. There were many small time bootleggers, for instance. I think it's a crummy idea to reduce history this way - who are you trying to teach a lesson, and why should someone trust that your interpretation of the chain of events is accurate?
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  • mrgoldenbrown 11 hours ago
    I would call this a history quiz, not a puzzle. The "ripples" are not deducible from the info given.
  • gfysfm 15 hours ago
    This is really cool! It's interesting that you can "cheat" by knowing the historical situation in advance. But I guess there's no way around that - if the situations involved were hypothetical, it would be unsatisfying when you guessed "wrong". It'd be neat to see really obscure examples drawn from history.
  • agnishom 5 hours ago
    While this could (today's instance was not particularly mind blowing) be interesting, I don't like the idea of calling a trivia based on historical facts a puzzle
  • frenchmajesty 16 hours ago
    Cool concept! However, the fact that it's on a timer and you can only try the next even in 1m is a killer feature (in a not-good way). Same for not being able to view the leaderboard
  • nialv7 15 hours ago
    This kind of smells LLM, which is fine. But I do want to see the facts backed by citations.
  • Aboutplants 12 hours ago
    Pivot this to be a history learning app, I find this kind of learning to be addictive.
  • 4ggr0 16 hours ago
    i'm sold, but please add a historic or archive mode, i need more...
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    • nick238 12 hours ago
      I pulled out the data that I could see; strangely it seems to be the 16th question but the page shows "#736"

      Data as JSON: https://gist.github.com/nicktimko/fb48810b448275a4d7817e2b65...

      Or if you want to download it yourself (yay for Gemini giving me a Node one-liner to parse a JS object to get JSON. Beware it uses `eval`!!!)

          curl -sSL https://ripplegame.app/assets/index-B2aU9M_o.js | \
        grep -E -o -p "\[\{id:1\,.+\"}]}]" | \
        node -e "const vm=require('vm'); let b=''; process.stdin.on('data',d=>b+=d).on('end',()=> { try { const script=new vm.Script('('+b+')'); console.log(JSON.stringify(script.runInNewContext({}),null,2)) } catch(e) { console.error('Invalid JS') } })"
    • ReaLNero 10 hours ago
      Try this: https://vladimirtech-eng.github.io/ripple-mirror/
    • TuringTest 15 hours ago
      Came here to say the same. The game tastes as too little with just one question; when you get the gist of how it works, it's over.
  • fn-mote 15 hours ago
    Cute, but you can do only one day at a time. I would have had to like it more to be motivated to bookmark it and come back tomorrow.
  • John7878781 17 hours ago
    I wonder if this could be used to gauge someone's optimism/pessimism.
  • DecoPerson 11 hours ago
    Too much speculation. Take the 18th amendment one. Maybe prohibition did have the desired effects, in addition to the undesirable side effects. The two are not mutually exclusive.
  • dmichulke 7 hours ago
    I just played one (can iI play any of the past ones?)

    But this should be mandatory game-theoretic education for politicians (if it really is what I think it is).

  • bgbntty2 11 hours ago
    Why can I only play #736? What's up with games nowadays that only give you 1 puzzle per day? IIRC the original Wordle was like that. Is it designed to make you bookmark the URL and visit it every day? I doubt most people would do that.
  • ivolimmen 4 hours ago
    It seems I know more about American history than I thought. Cool puzzle.
  • blue1 5 hours ago
    Unusable on iphone SE, the UI is cropped on the bottom and cannot be scrolled.
  • kittikitti 11 hours ago
    What are the second and third order effects of the CIA capturing Maduro?
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    • dmichulke 7 hours ago
      Increased security for "unapproved" leaders of a state. Allies will help out of fear instead of common goals. Resentment among allies. Appeasement until counter control is effective
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      • DocTomoe 1 hour ago
        Fasttracking WMD programs up to and including nuclear for country leaders who are feeling a bit too 'abductable' for comfort.
  • verisimi 7 hours ago
    It's as if this can be known in advance. And that the most acceptable reason/justification is provided (terrorists, child abuse prevention) knowing the likely result at the end of the cascade (security cameras, restrictions, de-anonymised internet).
  • paxys 13 hours ago
    I leave this comment whenever a new game with this "one game a day" model pops up:

    You are not Wordle. You are never going to recreate the virality of of Wordle. The artificial restriction on gameplay does not help you because 99.999% of your users are going to play it and move on rather than bookmark your site, set a reminder and come back the next day. Instead let them play a bunch of games NOW and they may get hooked.

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  • jsmo 11 hours ago
    Nice!
  • lurk2 11 hours ago
    > Next puzzle in 4 hours

    What is the point of this? I’m not going to return to a site with a cooldown timer after using it once.

  • Mistletoe 15 hours ago
    Does it only have one example? Really would like more.
  • ToolboxPro 11 hours ago
    [dead]