A live-play word game for three players, similar to "Wheel of Fortune" and "Hangman", with "Jeopardy"-inspired scoring.
The game is displayed on a single screen, and the keyboard used to control the game during live play.
Originally created for the after-party at EuroPython 2020.
This repository only contains the Word Peril game itself. You will need to
provide the puzzles in the form of .peril files, which are written in
JSON format.
See example_puzzleset.peril in the root of this repository for an example
of a puzzleset file.
Each puzzleset must have a title as the key for the first object, and one or more clues, each one associated with a list of puzzles.
Here's a shortened example, with a title of "Office Stuff", a single clue "thing", and two separated puzzles that use that clue.
{
"Office Stuff":
{
"thing": [
"stack of sticky notes",
"pink eraser"
]
}
}
Word Peril converts all text to ALL CAPS, so letter case is not important.
Clues should be as vague as possible, using names such as "phrase", "thing", "title", or "what are you doing?"
Every puzzle should be able to fit on the game board, which is four rows of fourteen letters. A single word and its connected punctuation will never be broken across multiple rows. The game will figure out how to best fit the puzzle to the board; if it can't, Word Peril will simply omit the puzzle from the puzzle set.
2-3 players, plus a Host to control the game.
A game consists of as many puzzles can be fit into a set period of time (10 minutes recommended). Do not start a new puzzle when you only have 1:30 left in the round.
Before the game starts, the Host should remind everyone of the rules.
At the start of the round, the Host should read the clue aloud. The leftmost player starts the first round.
During their turn, a player may do one of two things:
- Guess a letter. If the letter is in the puzzle and not used, the player gains points (for consonants only) and can make another guess. If the letter is not in the puzzle, they lose 50 points and their turn ends. If the letter is already guessed, their score is unaffected, and their turn ends.
- Request to solve the puzzle. When told by the Host to go ahead, they should read the entire puzzle out loud, adding and omitting nothing. If they are correct, they gain 300 points and the round is over. If they are incorrect, they lose 200 points and their turn end.
The player with the highest positive score at the end of all rounds wins the game. You cannot win with a negative score.
Word Peril is controlled entirely by the keyboard. You should pick one person to control the game, preferably a designated "host" instead of a player.
When you first launch Word Peril, you will need to load a puzzle set
from a .peril file. (See "Where Are The Puzzles?") Press L to load a
puzzleset, and then navigate to a .peril file.
Word Peril will immediately process the file. If it encounters any fatal error, it will warn you with an "Invalid File" message on the screen, and will not finish loading the file. If you had a prior puzzle set loaded, that set will remain loaded.
Once a puzzle set has been successfully loaded, the title of the set will be displayed, along with the number of available puzzles. This number is the total number of puzzles in the puzzle set, minus (a) any puzzles that won't fit on the puzzle board, and (b) any puzzles that have already been played (see "Cache" below.)
Once you're ready to play, press the ENTER or RETURN key.
Word Peril remembers what puzzles have already been played in a given set, and stores this data in a cache file on your computer. This way, you can be certain that you won't have any repeat puzzles when playing multiple rounds, even if you restart the program.
You can reset the cache for the current puzzle set by pressing the R key.
You'll see a "Reset Puzzle Set!" message on your screen if this is successful,
and the puzzle count will reset.
The next step is to tell Word Peril who's playing. Press the TAB key to move
into each name field on the scoreboard, and type the name of each player.
You must fill in all player fields before you can start a round.
NOTE: I'll be adding two-player support later.
Once you have all names filled in, and then make sure you've tabbed past all
the names (none will be selected) and press ENTER or RETURN to start the
game. You'll next see the Score Screen, which is displayed between rounds.
When you first start the game, and after each round, you'll see the Score Screen. This will show:
- The name of the current puzzle set, and how many puzzles remain.
- The current scores of the players. The highest positive score is highlighted.
- The last solved puzzle.
Press N to start the next round, or ESC to quit. As soon as you quit,
all the scores will be erased and unrecoverable!
There are six main elements to the puzzle screen:
- The Used Letter Board is on the left. Vowels are shown on the top row, and the consonants are displayed alphabetically on the remaining rows.
- The Puzzle Board is the large board on the right. Empty green tiles are letters that need to be filled in, and blue tiles are unused.
- The Clue is displayed on the bar below the Puzzle Board.
- The Scoreboard is below the puzzle area, showing the players and their scores. The current player is highlighted in green.
- The Solve Bar is below the Scoreboard.
TABinto this field and enter the puzzle to solve it.
To guess a letter, press a letter key.
- A correct consonant adds 50 points per instance in puzzle.
- A correct vowel adds no points.
- An incorrect letter removes 50 points and ends the turn.
- An already used letter adds/removes no points, but ends the turn.
Whenever a letter is guessed, it is added to the Used Letter Board.
To solve the puzzle, TAB to the Solve Bar at the bottom of the screen, and
enter the puzzle. Only the letters are checked: spaces and symbols are ignored.
Even if the board is completely filled, the player must still solve the puzzle.
- A correct solve adds 300 points and ends the game.
- An incorrect solve removes 200 points and ends the turn.
If the host makes a mistake, such as entering the wrong letter or introducing
a typo into the solved puzzle, the most recent action can be undone by
pressing the PAUSE key.
This feature is not intended as a part of gameplay. Players are never allowed to "take back" a move. The Undo feature is only for fixing mistakes where their keyboard entry does not match the player's stated letter guess or puzzle solve attempt.
At the end of the round, you return to the Score Screen. The completed puzzle is displayed, along with the current scores for the whole game so far. The highest positive score is highlighted; if there's a tie, both/all the players with identical high scores are highlighted.
A new round can be started with N. The current scores are carried into the
next round.
When there's no time left for a new round, congratulate the winner of the game, et cetera.
Pressing ESC ends the game and immediately erases scores! Do not press
this key until you're ready to permanently erase the scores.
Once the game is ended, you'll return to the Player Setup screen to enter new names, or if the puzzle set is "exhausted" (no unused puzzles left), to the Game Setup screen to load or reset a puzzle set.
- Python 3.8
- PySide2
- appdirs
The included setup.py and Makefile mean you can run the game directly from this repository. On any system that supports Makefiles, simply run:
make run
That command will create the virtual environment, install the game, and run it.
Alternatively, you can create your own Python 3.8 (or later) virtual environment and install the game by running the following from within the root of the repository:
/path/to/your/venv/pip install .
If you encounter any bugs, please report them on the Word Peril GitHub. I also welcome feature requests, although I'm not likely to follow through on them very quickly (if at all). Pull Requests are preferred for adding functionality!
