Word Wheel

⚠️ NOTE: “PLEASE DON’T USE ANDROID as it gives error in some devices”⚠️

Inspiration

We wanted to mix crossword logic and word guessing with a physical touch (wheel rotating mechanics)

A daily word unscrambler challenge mixing between word guessing, crosswords logic and spinning mechanics.

🎮 How to Play

Spin to Solve: Letters are scattered. Spin the wheel to align rotate the letters around.
Two Modes: Levels can be in two modes: 180° Flip and a 90° Spin where things may get messy.
Auto-Check: Letters will have a "checkmark" when they are in the correct position.
Beat the Clock Every solve is timed and ranked against the global community for that specific post.
Create & Share: Use the Puzzle Creator to build your own Word Wheel challenge for the community!

⚙️ Key Features

🔥 Streak System: Track your daily consistency.
🏆 Percentile Ranking: See exactly how much faster you are than the average player (e.g., "Faster than 85% of solvers").
↩️ Undo/Reset: you can backtrack your moves or reset the board to its starting orbital state.
🧠Various puzzle possibilities: with two different modes & user custom levels
🐢First-time Tutorial is included to get a quick glimpse of the mechanics, however, user can go crazy creating puzzles.
💡User-Generated Puzzles: Any player can create a custom challenge, which is dynamically numbered and posted back to the subreddit for others to solve.

Core Engine: GameMaker
Backend & Social: Reddit Devvit (using Redis for persistent global data).
Animation: TweenGMS for polished, "juicy" transitions.
Assets: Open Emoji library, Kenney’s iconic UI sets, and SFX from Freesound.org (CC 0).

Bridge: Understanding how to bridge between GameMaker and Devvit, but once we got a grasp of the limitations and correct calling methods, things went smooth.
Balanced Design: Designing puzzles that are challenging but not frustrating was tricky. We solved this by implementing the dual 90/180-degree rotation modes, allowing us to tweak the difficulty through mechanics rather than just word length.
Race Against Time, I discovered the hackathon with only 2 weeks remaining! it was couple busy weekends, but it turned out nice, I'm proud of what we have here and looking forward to see how the players will play with it. ## Accomplishments that we're proud of
Social Integration: We almost implemented all the social features we wanted, we still want to add more though.
The Creator Tool: was a huge plus, while testing we found that people enjoyed making puzzles and watching others trying to figure it out.
Freedom VS Safety: While giving freedom to user to make puzzles of whatever they want, we added validation layers to ensure user-generated puzzles remain friendly and safe for all subreddits, keeping the focus on fun.

Mechanical Difficulty: We discovered that simple tweaks—shifting a letter's position or swapping the rotation mode—can transform a "piece of cake" puzzle into a "nightmarish" brain-teaser.
Early Integration: Testing early across multiple frameworks is vital when bridging a game engine with a platform API.
The Power of GameMaker: As a game jam veteran, I was surprised by how effectively GameMaker could power a Reddit-linked community game. Understanding request methods unlocked a whole new world of "Fresh & Social" gameplay possibilities.

Implement puzzle's data into the post to invite the players to try it.
Work on splash loading screens to be more appealing
Better (polished) "How to play"
Explore reddit's powerful features and tools to prepare it for publishing with some automated.
Add streak badges and global leaderboard.
Enhance level editor: providing a auto shuffle button to scramble the words and letters.
Develop a custom JavaScript communication bridge to allow the GameMaker to trigger native Reddit UI elements like navigation and toasts.

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