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Show HN: Domino Fit – Domino Tiling Puzzle

by macromaniac on 2/18/24, 5:26 PM with 75 comments

Domino fit is a domino tiling puzzler I spent a lot of time both making and playing. Its like sudoku but with a geometric angle, the sum of the dots must match the row and column numbers.

It's running on Betsy, the server under my couch, and was made with typescript. I'm proud of it.

I hope you give it a shot, and appreciate any thoughts or criticisms!

  • by gus_massa on 2/18/24, 6:47 PM

    Sometimes my mind wanders until I decide I want a "01" and I tap on the "01" tile at the bottom to select it. If the "01" is alredy selected, it switchs to the "02". But I tapped the "01" to select the "01" in spite it's already selected! (I have the same problem with the "02".)

    My recomendation is to change the logic of the selection at the bottom. Instead of switching each time, I'd like that if I tap on the left bottom I select the "01", and if I tap on the right bottom I select the "02".

  • by darajava on 2/18/24, 9:58 PM

    I can’t get over how smooth and satisfying it is, not to mention how fun the game itself is! Very well built, I really enjoyed playing it!

    I think there would be more chance of it going viral if there was one difficult level per day, rather than 5 increasing in difficulty.

  • by anotheryou on 2/18/24, 6:16 PM

    Fun game!

    But please change the tutorial example to something where the dots don't align with each other on the dominos (this is obviously not required, but part of the usual domino game and therefore it's easy to make that wrong assumption here)

    It would also be nice to see how the domino will be dropped, I often put it down off by one square. Maybe a faint outline under the cursor, or even snapped to the grid.

  • by matsemann on 2/18/24, 9:15 PM

    I really enjoyed this! I've played lots of "Magnets" from Tatham's Puzzle Collection [0], which is similar but not the same. Your game was really well polished and easy to quickly grok. Well done.

    [0]: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/

  • by ilikehurdles on 2/18/24, 6:22 PM

    A little intimidating at first but eventually all the pieces fit into place. I feel like the challenge is in finding early on the rows/columns that can only be one exact combination of pieces and then building from there. Also looking for odd numbers means there must be a 1-piece in that alignment.

  • by lanternfish on 2/19/24, 5:23 AM

    If you like this style of puzzle, I highly recommend Simon Tatham's Puzzles on android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.boyle.chr...). It has implementations of a dozen or so puzzles including a domino puzzle not unlike this one. And it has no ads or microtransactions to boot.

  • by JKCalhoun on 2/18/24, 11:34 PM

    Thank you for no timer. Timers ruin puzzles.

    "youwin3.mp3" sounds a little harsh to my ear for some reason. I looked at the sound in Audacity and it wasn't clipping — but sounded like it.

  • by transportgo on 2/18/24, 6:34 PM

    Ar first I didn’t understand that you couldn’t rotate. Would love to have “R” reset the board.

  • by pimlottc on 2/19/24, 5:25 PM

    A few more bits of feedback after playing it a while:

    - Move the "next board" arrow to appear within the playfield. It feels weird to move the mouse outside the playfield just for that, and then back to the playfield to hit the "start" button. Just have them both appear in the same place.

    - Rework the progress/trophy icon to make it clear there are 5 stages. It gave me the impression there were 4 stage and that you receive the trophy as a reward after the four stage (when the row of dots is full).

    These are relatively minor, though, it's a fun game!

  • by bhtdz on 2/19/24, 12:14 AM

    At first, I didn't realize that all of the spaces must be filled by tiles. Perhaps that could be made more obvious.

    Nice game!

  • by _fw on 2/18/24, 7:50 PM

    This is great! I was hooked after the first game. I’m glad these are a challenge, but not mind-bendingly difficult.

    Thanks for making and sharing, I love it.

  • by tcmb on 2/18/24, 6:51 PM

    I really enjoyed playing it, seems to hit the right sweet spot of difficulty. The earlier puzzles (1-4) seemed a bit easy at first, but not so easy to deter me from continuing. With #5 I needed a bit of back and forth, but not frustratingly much.

    Also I really like the graphics and sound, it's pleasant to look at and to listen to, which is important for a puzzle game imo.

  • by hexomancer on 2/18/24, 6:32 PM

    That was very fun! Are the puzzles handmade or procedurally generated?

  • by navane on 2/20/24, 2:11 PM

    I played it a couple of days and it's great. I agree about the selecting the different tiles, it's not the smoothest but it's very easy to understand how that works. The whole puzzle really explains itself well with the numbers turning green. I love how I'm building a set of heuristics (this space only fits a horizontal, if I need X points on a vertical, I need doubles...) in my mind to solve these puzzles step by step, just like with a sudoku, but very much it's own.

    Maybe tapping on the left selects the left piece, right the right, and middle toggles? But that's just booked shedding. Great, polished puzzle!

  • by TheJoeMan on 2/18/24, 6:23 PM

    This is fun! The exact type of game my wife loves. Agree on the other comment about misclicking off-by-one placement errors on a phone touchscreen.

    Small feedback, the “copy” button doesnt seem to work on iOS Safari. Otherwise would be a good rip of the wordle emoji share ability.

  • by serenepipe on 2/19/24, 2:11 AM

    Really fun! Reminds me a lot of Nikoli puzzles[0], which I have spent many, many hours playing.

    [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikoli_(publisher)

  • by pimlottc on 2/18/24, 6:53 PM

    Please change the red/green colors on the row numbers, it's difficult for colorblind people. I didn't even realize it was changing colors from green to red when I had too many dots.

    In general, though, a fun game and looks very polished!

  • by alstonite on 2/25/24, 10:49 PM

    Today I got "wizard" on one of the levels! What does it mean?

    My entire friend group and I love the game, thank you for making it <3

  • by lxe on 2/18/24, 9:23 PM

    Very satisfying! And definitely unlike any other puzzle I've seen. Nicely done.

    Edit: just finished the set. This is wordle-level addicting at this point. Different strategies to think of, and insanely satisfying endgame.

  • by aardvark179 on 2/19/24, 2:06 PM

    It’s a nice puzzle, but because the two dominoes only have one fixed orientation some of the puzzles end up being a little too easy as the blocked spaces strongly limit the possible tilings. I think I did at least one without having to look at the row and column counts.

    If you’re trying to make this a daily thing then I think I understand that decision on difficulty, and I may have played too many games of magnets in Simon Tatham’s puzzle collection so I may not be your target market. :-)

  • by murray-buttchin on 2/21/24, 4:44 PM

    Is there only one possible solution for each board? Today I felt like deriving contradictions was a lot harder today than usual, but I still ended up with the correct answers.

    I think there should be a way to mark dominos as "confirmed" vs "guesses", because not everyone is going to have working memory to remember which tiles laid down are "guesses" for deriving contradictions.

  • by nakovet on 3/3/24, 1:05 AM

    I’ve been playing every day it’s relaxing, quick, fun. I added to my Home Screen so I don’t lose it.

  • by zoky on 2/25/24, 2:47 PM

    Pretty cool, except for one major UI flaw. When there are only two options, clicking on either one should toggle between them. I feel like this was previously the default, so I’m left wondering why this no longer works?

  • by ozyschmozy on 2/19/24, 2:04 PM

    This is really fun, wonder how many different dominos you could introduce and still be able to generate puzzles with a single solution

  • by pmontra on 2/18/24, 10:12 PM

    I passed the first level right now. The game is OK but there are a couple of things that confused me.

    The small example at the home page didn't prepare me to play the level. I had to place many pieces on the board before I realized that the sum of the number of dots must match the number on the rows and columns. The example didn't lead me to that.

  • by thatguysaguy on 2/18/24, 9:59 PM

    I think it'd be nice to have some harder puzzles, it seems a bit too straightforward once you figure out the tactics ATM.

  • by gbdubs on 2/18/24, 9:31 PM

    This was really good, really intuitive design, the sound added a ton to the experience, thanks for building and sharing!

  • by lee on 2/23/24, 1:57 PM

    I love this game! It's really satisfying and addictive. Nice work.

    One suggestion: I have a friend who is color-blind and has a hard time seeing the red and green numbers. Maybe add a visual indicator? Thanks!

  • by recursive on 2/18/24, 7:15 PM

    Love it. I'd appreciate an endless mode that's not clock gated.

  • by jcfiala on 2/28/24, 9:25 PM

    Thanks! This is a lot of fun. I enjoy tumbling the ideas in my head.

  • by prezjordan on 2/19/24, 1:36 AM

    Surprised how much I enjoyed this. Great work! If you made a mobile app with, say, 40 puzzles I could easily see myself throwing 5 bucks your way. Perfect subway game.

  • by noduerme on 2/18/24, 9:14 PM

    Really fun and clever. The N64 Mario font is a nice touch ;)

  • by chr1 on 2/19/24, 2:48 PM

    When winning turning green numbers black makes it feel like you lost the game. Numbers should stay green until a new game is started.

  • by grapescheesee on 2/19/24, 7:23 AM

    Really enjoyed playing this. Larger board, would be great. Also had experienced the switching issue, but everything else was smooth.

  • by cbracketdash on 2/19/24, 1:03 AM

    Super cool! Maybe a bigger board would be cool too :D

    Would also love to hear about how you designed the algorithm for generating puzzles!

  • by sharken on 2/19/24, 4:43 PM

    Playing this on Android Brave browser using dark theme is not possible. The dots do not show.

  • by tamimio on 2/18/24, 11:34 PM

    Love it! Hope there was a level selector of some sort if you exit the browser.

  • by rock8y on 2/19/24, 4:56 AM

    Had a fun few minutes playing the game. Thanks and keep up the hard work.

  • by dudus on 2/19/24, 1:40 AM

    I loved It.

    Inspired me to build a clone to learn Svelte. I'll try that this week.

  • by toutenrab on 2/18/24, 8:11 PM

    Really nice, thanks for the discovery and the work behind it!

  • by nhatcher on 2/19/24, 12:39 AM

    Loved it! Well made and engaging.

    Is there just one solution for each puzzle?

  • by danjudgemusic on 2/19/24, 2:53 PM

    Very much enjoyed this, my avg completion time was 267

  • by frogpelt on 2/18/24, 7:38 PM

    Cool game! Curious, why are there numbers on both sides?

  • by city41 on 2/18/24, 11:12 PM

    It really reminds me of picross, which is a good thing.

  • by sangharsh on 2/20/24, 5:52 PM

    Great game and well built. Love playing it.

  • by longtimelistnr on 2/19/24, 5:48 PM

    I couldn't stop playing. very fun game

  • by Aken on 2/18/24, 11:11 PM

    This was fun! Thanks for sharing

  • by ElCapitanMarkla on 2/18/24, 11:26 PM

    Hey nice work, I enjoyed that

  • by milemi on 2/18/24, 6:54 PM

    Great game, enjoyed it a lot!

  • by yesthisiswes on 2/18/24, 11:37 PM

    This is awesome! Great work!

  • by z5h on 2/18/24, 8:02 PM

    Love it out of the gate.

  • by kevindamm on 2/18/24, 9:28 PM

    DOMINO FIT #1