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Show HN: I made a daily puzzle game about mixing colors

by tlackemann on 4/4/24, 11:56 AM with 19 comments

While on paternal leave, I wanted to create a game my newborn daughter could eventually play and learn something from. I was heavily inspired by the daily puzzle games I consistently play such as Wordle and Strands.

Refractor is a game about connecting colored tiles together to reach all the goals. Use "refractor" tiles to combine two colors together but be careful not to trap yourself in! The game is won when all goals are fulfilled.

The tech stack is: Laravel + Inertia, React + TypeScript, and DaisyUI + TailwindCSS.

Open to any questions or feedback. Hope you might find it interesting!

  • by playingalong on 4/4/24, 7:56 PM

    Nicely done.

    I need to admit the second step in the tutorial took me a while. It's not obvious the mixing tiles accept incoming colors only at some of the sides. I.e. you need to go further with the blue and make a U turn.

  • by aabbcc1241 on 4/4/24, 12:19 PM

    I'm also thinking about a color game but not committed to make it yet. Congratulations on release it.

  • by nextaccountic on 4/5/24, 3:28 AM

    I want to play more, 1 puzzle per day is satisfying for word puzzles but not for this kind of puzzle IMO

    Maybe you can still have a hand-curated daily puzzle, but also have some procedural generation to have endless puzzles

  • by thesh4d0w on 4/5/24, 10:04 PM

    1. The restart button doesn't seem to work half the time

    2. As a techie who thinks of color in RGB, it took me a very long time to understand how to make green from yellow.

  • by invisibleloop on 4/4/24, 10:16 PM

    Looks good. Unfortunately my colour blindness means the first level after the tutorial was difficult for me to play. Which sucks.

  • by datascienced on 4/4/24, 10:25 PM

    Beautiful game!

  • by dustyduster on 4/4/24, 9:58 PM

    Enough with the daily stuff. I would like to actually play the game you made.