Zach Gage from Puzzmo was kind enough to quickly respond to this post in a thread with some suggestions on turning off competitive stats and different ways to play the games: https://x.com/helvetica/status/1726788019242312118?s=20
The episode of Eggplant Show where he discusses the future plans for Puzzmo assure me that they'll get this right. The upgrade to the UI that I'd like to see is the ability to play games directly in the feed, rather than clicking to a new page. I'm not sure if there's a way to make this feel good, but it would be much more in line with Zach's anti-"list of links" vision than the current form of the app, which is also a list of links, albeit fancier.
It's always metacrab. One thing I enjoy about Puzzmo is that the different puzzles appeal to/suit different abilities well. I can't do Really Bad Chess to save my life, and I'm not great at Spelltower, either, but I'm pretty good at the Crossword (proudly have yet to ever use a hint). But I do agree with you that the leaderboard can be discouraging, but I also kind of mentally gave up on it when I realized so many people cheat. If it's that important to them to "win," I'm never going to be competitive because I won't. So I use my position on the leaderboard relatively; am I in my usual zone? Worse? Better? That helps keep it more fun for me.
Zach Gage from Puzzmo was kind enough to quickly respond to this post in a thread with some suggestions on turning off competitive stats and different ways to play the games: https://x.com/helvetica/status/1726788019242312118?s=20
The episode of Eggplant Show where he discusses the future plans for Puzzmo assure me that they'll get this right. The upgrade to the UI that I'd like to see is the ability to play games directly in the feed, rather than clicking to a new page. I'm not sure if there's a way to make this feel good, but it would be much more in line with Zach's anti-"list of links" vision than the current form of the app, which is also a list of links, albeit fancier.
That would be neat! Might be heavy on the servers but there is probably a way.
It's always metacrab. One thing I enjoy about Puzzmo is that the different puzzles appeal to/suit different abilities well. I can't do Really Bad Chess to save my life, and I'm not great at Spelltower, either, but I'm pretty good at the Crossword (proudly have yet to ever use a hint). But I do agree with you that the leaderboard can be discouraging, but I also kind of mentally gave up on it when I realized so many people cheat. If it's that important to them to "win," I'm never going to be competitive because I won't. So I use my position on the leaderboard relatively; am I in my usual zone? Worse? Better? That helps keep it more fun for me.
Yep! It's just a shame that in order to play the game in a way they enjoy, so many people have to actively ignore the leaderboards.