After a hiatus to work on some other projects, there are a couple new changes on the site.
Pro Membership
On the live version of the site, you can purchase a very inexpensive "Pro Membership," which removes ads from the site. Now your pro membership transfers over to the new site, and you shouldn't see ads here, either. If you have a pro membership, but you're still seeing ads on the new site, go back to the "dev tester" page on the old site and re-login.
World of Words
World of Words is a new blog which will be maintained by Laura; she will be doing a "word of the month" feature, using words she chooses. But if you would like to suggest a favorite word for her to write about, you can use the contact form to make your suggestion!
What's Next?
I'm hoping to have more changes, and perhaps a couple more games on the site next week. Stay tuned!
If you've been looking for math games, three have been added to the site today! Here they are:
If you've played these on the old site, you'll notice that the interface is different for all of them. Gone are the days of dragging the numbers around the screen. Instead, click once to select, and then click a second time to drop. It may seem awkward at first, if you're used to the old way, but in the long run you'll find it much easier. The change should be helpful to mobile users; the mobile feedback has generally been that a drag is a much harder move than a click-to-pick-up, click-to-drop.
There may not be any new games cropping up on the site for a couple weeks, but have no fear; there will be more!
Thanks so much to all of you who have participated in giving suggestions and feedback. Special thanks to zapot and AlexanderBeetle, whose suggestions, questions, and bug reports in the community forum have been invaluable in improving the games.
* Subtraction Triangles has also been added to the daily games list!
Two new games have been added to the site, so if you're interested in testing either of them, here they are:
Secret Number
This is the game that used to be called "Secret Number 2" on the old site. Use the clues the site gives you to determine the secret 3-digit number. In this version there is no text area to enter your guess; simply type the number you want, and it'll show up in the highlighted box. The highlighting rotates through the three available digits.
Note that renaming this game to "Secret Number" means that the game which used to be called "Secret Number" now needs a new name! I have a thread in the discussion forum for people to suggest new names for that game.
Rotating Block Puzzle
The graphic experience for this game has been significantly improved from the old site; now you can actually see the blocks rotate, which helps the player visualize how this really works. Your goal, if you're not familiar with the puzzle from the old site, is to get the four colors together in the four corners of the playing board. This is a challenging puzzle, so you may want to start out with the difficulty set to "Novice". When it is set to novice, the puzzle can be solved by rotating only one set of blocks.
Bug Fixes
One of our members pointed out that if you are on a mobile device, and shift your screen orientation, the "Game Over" dialog is no longer centered. This should be fixed now. Also, the same member noted that if you close and reopen the "Game Over" dialog, the buttons no longer work. This should also be fixed.
The big news for the morning is that we've got Blackberry Game on the site now. This game is very similar to Telephone Game, but it is much simpler, because there are only two letters per blackberry key (and some keys only have one letter!).
For this reason, many of our teen and adult members much prefer the greater challenge of Telephone Game, but younger children find Blackberry Game to be more at their difficulty level.
A few small tweaks this morning.
- The game board has been rearranged for Picture Word and Hangman, so the alphabet is at the bottom of the game board, like it is for Secret Word. This is to maintain consistency, and to (hopefully) make game play easier for mobile users.
- Last Candle was given a very minor tweak to help keep the size of the candles consistent, so you don't sometimes have huge candles, and other times really small candles.
- If you bookmark theproblemsite.net, you shouldn't have to keep going back to the DevTester page on the old site to renew your access. The only time you'll need to go back there is if you stay away for more than 7 days, or I have a specific user account update that needs to be transferred over to your account on the new site.
I'd like to direct your attention to two new things on the site:
1. We've uploaded video instructions for playing Adders. Probably this was not the game most in need of video directions, but it's the first one we tried. Creating video directions for the different games is going to be a long-range goal for the site. You can view the video by clicking the video camera icon on the adders page. It looks like this:
2. A Discussion Forum has been added to the site. The forum software is not 100% complete; for example, you can't yet format text in your posts, or add links. Those features will appear down the road. Right now, I wanted to make sure testers have a place where they can go to post comments and suggestions, or even just chat with other testers.