Scoring
Understand the various parameters used to determine the score for puzzle solvers
The scoring settings determine how the players of the game are scored depending on their puzzle progress.
Here's an overview table of scoring capabilities across various games:
| Puzzle Type | Points | Hint / Reveal | Reveal Penalty | Target Time | Contest Mode |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crossword | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sudoku | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Quiz | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Word Search | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Word Flower | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Kriss Kross | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Picdoku | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Wordoku | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| WordroW | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Jigsaw | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
From the perspective of scoring, the PuzzleMe platform has two types of games:
- Games without sequential progress: Some games do not have a notion of sequential progress. Either the player managed to complete the game, or they did not. In these games, there is no explicit score. Performance can still be ranked using the amount of time or the number of attempts it took for the player to complete the game. Games in this category are the jigsaw and WordroW.
- Games with sequential progress: Other games have a notion of sequential progress. In this case, even if the player is only able to solve a game partially, you can rank their performance. Games in this category include crossword, sudoku, word search, word flower, quiz, code word and kriss kross.
Keeping this in mind, let's talk about the scoring settings available in the Puzzle dashboard.
Points
All games with sequential progress have a notion of points. These are assigned each time the player makes incremental progress (finds a word or answers a question correctly).
In certain games that have a notion of reveal/hint/clue, you can also assign a score penalty that the players will incur if they rely on these crutches.
Target time
All games with sequential progress allow you to reward quick players with bonus points. You can set the target time for each game, along with the number of bonus points that are assigned for each minute that the player does not use.
For instance, imagine your target time is 15 minutes, and bonus points per minute are set to 10. For a player who finishes the puzzle in 5 minutes, they are assigned 100 bonus points for completing the game.
Hints & reveals
Most games on the PuzzleMe platform support some notion of assisting the player during gameplay. In almost all cases, the scoring mechanism accounts for the use of such assistance and penalizes the player by reducing their score.
As these settings vary based on the game type, the details of these settings are covered in the game-specific documentation.
The behavior is different across puzzles:
In crossword and kriss kross, if a set of letters is revealed but never a full word, bonus points for quick play are still rewarded for the overall game. If at least one full word is revealed (either at once, or letter-by-letter), bonus points for quick play are not rewarded. If the entire grid is revealed one word at a time, points are awarded only for the words the player entered on their own. If the entire grid is revealed instantly, no points are awarded, regardless of the player's progress.
In a sudoku (or a sudoku variant), no penalty is incurred for relying on assistance features (such as viewing candidates for cell/grid). However, if the player reveals the grid, then no points are awarded, regardless of the player's progress.
Contest mode
Crossword, quiz and jigsaw support a special contest mode. In this mode,
- All help and reveal/hint/clue features are disabled.
- The player has to manually submit their play once they finish, using the Submit button in the game bar.
- Every play can be submitted exactly once.
- The correct answers are stored only on the server and never sent to the browser.
- You (the creator of the puzzle) can request the player's name, email and mobile number. If requested, the player is prompted to enter these details after submitting the puzzle. This ensures that the time spent entering in information is not added to the puzzle-solving time.
Contest mode allows you to collect the player's details, such as their name, email address and mobile number.
To implement this, you have to tweak your series/puzzle embedding. To know more, read this section.