Ripple, a Puzzle Game About 2nd and 3rd Order Effects
Key topics
The Ripple game has sparked a lively discussion, with players clamoring for more content and features, such as a historic mode or archive, to make the experience more binge-worthy. Some commenters, like John7878781, are exploring the game's potential as a tool for gauging optimism or pessimism, while others, like nialv7, are questioning the accuracy of the facts presented, calling for citations to back up the claims. As players dig deeper, they've uncovered interesting insights, such as the game's limited dataset, with nick238 discovering that the 736th question is actually the 16th in the sequence. With its engaging concept and "cheatable" gameplay, Ripple has captured players' imaginations, but its timer-based progression and lack of leaderboard visibility are major drawbacks.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Active discussionFirst comment
4h
Peak period
16
6-12h
Avg / period
5.1
Based on 41 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Jan 4, 2026 at 12:50 PM EST
4d ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Jan 4, 2026 at 4:36 PM EST
4h after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
16 comments in 6-12h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Jan 7, 2026 at 12:33 PM EST
1d ago
Step 04
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Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
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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`!!!)
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.
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...
But this should be mandatory game-theoretic education for politicians (if it really is what I think it is).