Ripple, a puzzle game about 2nd and 3rd order effects

136•mooreds•20h ago

Comments

John7878781•16h ago

I wonder if this could be used to gauge someone's optimism/pessimism.

4ggr0•16h ago

i'm sold, but please add a historic or archive mode, i need more...

TuringTest•15h ago

Came here to say the same. The game tastes as too little with just one question; when you get the gist of how it works, it's over.

nick238•11h ago

I pulled out the data that I could see; strangely it seems to be the 16th question but the page shows "#736"

Data as JSON: https://gist.github.com/nicktimko/fb48810b448275a4d7817e2b65...

Or if you want to download it yourself (yay for Gemini giving me a Node one-liner to parse a JS object to get JSON. Beware it uses `eval`!!!)

    curl -sSL https://ripplegame.app/assets/index-B2aU9M_o.js | \
        grep -E -o -p "\[\{id:1\,.+\"}]}]" | \
        node -e "const vm=require('vm'); let b=''; process.stdin.on('data',d=>b+=d).on('end',()=> { try { const script=new vm.Script('('+b+')'); console.log(JSON.stringify(script.runInNewContext({}),null,2)) } catch(e) { console.error('Invalid JS') } })"

ReaLNero•10h ago

Try this: https://vladimirtech-eng.github.io/ripple-mirror/

frenchmajesty•16h ago

Cool concept! However, the fact that it's on a timer and you can only try the next even in 1m is a killer feature (in a not-good way). Same for not being able to view the leaderboard

nialv7•15h ago

This kind of smells LLM, which is fine. But I do want to see the facts backed by citations.

Mistletoe•14h ago

Does it only have one example? Really would like more.

gfysfm•14h ago

This is really cool! It's interesting that you can "cheat" by knowing the historical situation in advance. But I guess there's no way around that - if the situations involved were hypothetical, it would be unsatisfying when you guessed "wrong". It'd be neat to see really obscure examples drawn from history.

HauntingPin•14h ago

This is cool but it needs to be bingeable to really make it big. I don't think this works as a Wordle once a day kind of thing. I was going to send it to a non-tech friend who'd love it, but decided against it once I saw the 23 hour timer. She would've hated me.

ReaLNero•10h ago

Try this: https://vladimirtech-eng.github.io/ripple-mirror/

HauntingPin•5h ago

Is this a non-limited version? After finishing a ripple, it could really use a "Random" button that lets you easily continue with another ripple, just so people can directly keep going.

fn-mote•14h ago

Cute, but you can do only one day at a time. I would have had to like it more to be motivated to bookmark it and come back tomorrow.

jrowen•13h ago

Idk the intended demographic but it felt too easy or even heavy-handed. Three of the four options in each round sound like "and everyone lived happily ever after." Only one sounds like something that would happen in real life and continue the story.

noduerme•13h ago

For the 18th Amendment, we can probably mostly agree on what happened. But it only works because the wrong answers are very obviously wrong (and virtually impossible). But that forces you into answering along the path which is clearly not as wrong, even though it's full of vague sweeping generalizations. There were many small time bootleggers, for instance. I think it's a crummy idea to reduce history this way - who are you trying to teach a lesson, and why should someone trust that your interpretation of the chain of events is accurate?

mirekrusin•39m ago

You mean GPT’s, right?

paxys•13h ago

I leave this comment whenever a new game with this "one game a day" model pops up:

You are not Wordle. You are never going to recreate the virality of of Wordle. The artificial restriction on gameplay does not help you because 99.999% of your users are going to play it and move on rather than bookmark your site, set a reminder and come back the next day. Instead let them play a bunch of games NOW and they may get hooked.

ReaLNero•10h ago

Try this: https://vladimirtech-eng.github.io/ripple-mirror/

Aboutplants•12h ago

Pivot this to be a history learning app, I find this kind of learning to be addictive.

DecoPerson•11h ago

Too much speculation. Take the 18th amendment one. Maybe prohibition did have the desired effects, in addition to the undesirable side effects. The two are not mutually exclusive.

kittikitti•11h ago

What are the second and third order effects of the CIA capturing Maduro?

dmichulke•6h ago

Increased security for "unapproved" leaders of a state. Allies will help out of fear instead of common goals. Resentment among allies. Appeasement until counter control is effective

DocTomoe•1h ago

Fasttracking WMD programs up to and including nuclear for country leaders who are feeling a bit too 'abductable' for comfort.

mrgoldenbrown•10h ago

I would call this a history quiz, not a puzzle. The "ripples" are not deducible from the info given.

bgbntty2•10h ago

Why can I only play #736? What's up with games nowadays that only give you 1 puzzle per day? IIRC the original Wordle was like that. Is it designed to make you bookmark the URL and visit it every day? I doubt most people would do that.

dzink•10h ago

The time delay is a dark pattern, the questions are too easy, and the login for leaderboard would makes sense if users could do longer question sequences with escalating difficulty. I would do this as a tree of possible consequences instead - let people share a red path most people would choose and a green path that should be chosen as the desirable outcome. See what shows up.

chii•10h ago

> I would do this as a tree of possible consequences instead

Games like Detroid:Become Human has a good UI for showing the decisions, and outcomes (as well as unexplored ones in grey).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=21627...

jsmo•10h ago

Nice!

lurk2•10h ago

> Next puzzle in 4 hours

What is the point of this? I’m not going to return to a site with a cooldown timer after using it once.

dmichulke•6h ago

I just played one (can iI play any of the past ones?)

But this should be mandatory game-theoretic education for politicians (if it really is what I think it is).

verisimi•6h ago

It's as if this can be known in advance. And that the most acceptable reason/justification is provided (terrorists, child abuse prevention) knowing the likely result at the end of the cascade (security cameras, restrictions, de-anonymised internet).

blue1•4h ago

Unusable on iphone SE, the UI is cropped on the bottom and cannot be scrolled.

agnishom•4h ago

While this could (today's instance was not particularly mind blowing) be interesting, I don't like the idea of calling a trivia based on historical facts a puzzle

ivolimmen•4h ago

It seems I know more about American history than I thought. Cool puzzle.

It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

Databases in 2025: A Year in Review

Decorative Cryptography

A spider web unlike any seen before

Anna's Archive loses .org domain after surprise suspension

Cigarette smoke effect using shaders

Show HN: Circuit Artist – Circuit simulator with propagation animation, rewind

Revisiting the original Roomba and its simple architecture

Lessons from 14 years at Google

Scientists Uncover the Universal Geometry of Geology (2020)

Jensen: 'We've Done Our Country a Great Disservice' by Offshoring

The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

Why does a least squares fit appear to have a bias when applied to simple data?

During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

I charged $18k for a Static HTML Page (2019)

Street Fighter II, the World Warrier (2021)

Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

Show HN: Terminal UI for AWS

Building a Rust-style static analyzer for C++ with AI

Monads in C# (Part 2): Result

Logos Language Guide: Compile English to Rust

Web development is fun again

3Duino helps you rapidly create interactive 3D-printed devices

Eurostar AI vulnerability: When a chatbot goes off the rails

Ask HN: Help with LLVM

Show HN: An interactive guide to how browsers work

Linear Address Spaces: Unsafe at any speed (2022)

How to translate a ROM: The mysteries of the game cartridge [video]

Claude Code On-the-Go

Six Harmless Bugs Lead to Remote Code Execution

Ripple, a puzzle game about 2nd and 3rd order effects

Comments

It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

Databases in 2025: A Year in Review

Decorative Cryptography

A spider web unlike any seen before

Anna's Archive loses .org domain after surprise suspension

Cigarette smoke effect using shaders

Show HN: Circuit Artist – Circuit simulator with propagation animation, rewind

Revisiting the original Roomba and its simple architecture

Lessons from 14 years at Google

Scientists Uncover the Universal Geometry of Geology (2020)

Jensen: 'We've Done Our Country a Great Disservice' by Offshoring

The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

Why does a least squares fit appear to have a bias when applied to simple data?

During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

I charged $18k for a Static HTML Page (2019)

Street Fighter II, the World Warrier (2021)

Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina

Show HN: Terminal UI for AWS

Building a Rust-style static analyzer for C++ with AI

Monads in C# (Part 2): Result

Logos Language Guide: Compile English to Rust

Web development is fun again

3Duino helps you rapidly create interactive 3D-printed devices

Eurostar AI vulnerability: When a chatbot goes off the rails

Ask HN: Help with LLVM

Show HN: An interactive guide to how browsers work

Linear Address Spaces: Unsafe at any speed (2022)

How to translate a ROM: The mysteries of the game cartridge [video]

Claude Code On-the-Go

Six Harmless Bugs Lead to Remote Code Execution