web analytics

TIMESUCK!

Behold, Scrabb.ly, the massive multiplayer online Scrabble game. That’s a zoom-out snapshot of the map, showing our little corner. It’s a couple of months old now, and whole thing is much, much bigger — passed four million tiles on Sunday. Kind of cool to look at.

Because it’s multiplayer, the rules — and strategies — are a little different. It’s always your turn. After the first word you play, you can only play off the tiles you’ve already played. Other people’s tiles appear grayed out. The only way to play their tiles is to bridge your word to their word — and then, you only free up the one tile you touch.

In other words, if you get surrounded, it’s a stone cold booger to break free.

The square in the middle, up there? That’s us about an hour ago. We had to spell like a bastard to get down and below that guy on the left, spelling at us hard. One day, I’m going to wake up socked in tight, several tiles deep, and it’ll be all over.

So the strategy is: make word shapes that are easy to build off, and spell your way away from the continent. Fast.

You code monkeys may enjoy this article on the why’s and how’s of building Scrabb.ly.

October 27, 2010 — 9:58 pm
Comments: 28