It’s a Klondike Solitaire game. It used to bring ~$500/mo of advertising revenue, but that’s significantly down these days: I refuse to have a cookie/consent banner, so I refuse customized ads (in the UE, in some US states now, &c.)
Players do add it to homescreen. There is a non-intrusive button prompting them to do so, at the end of a game. People like to be able to play offline.
Apart from that, I don’t use much PWA/browser features; no notifications, etc.
I just discovered something interesting while playing your game: I’ve been playing solitaire incorrectly for my entire life, several decades! I thought maybe you had changed the rules but then I just looked up the rules and I see it’s I who have apparently been playing it incorrectly. When I was taught solitaire by my grandparents, instead of turning over one card when you are out of moves, you always turn over three cards. The only way to unlock those cards you passed over in dealing three instead of one is to play one of them which will change the sequence of every three cards the next time you move through that deck. This certainly makes the game harder to win.
Hey great app! I really like the “undo until unstuck” feature, I haven’t seen that before. Is there an algorithm for that or did you come up with something yourself?
“The strategy presented here is the basis of the computer algorithm of FreeSolitaire.win, which is used to select finishable deals, offer hints, and detect dead-ends. You also see it surface when you are told that The computer could do it in N moves at the end of a game.
This strategy/algorithm is quite simple. It does not require to “count cards”, i.e. keep track of which cards were seen in the stock. It doesn’t require to make guesses on where such or such face-down card must be located. And the procedure is the same all along the game; there is no special treatement of the opening or ending. It’s stateless, a programmer would say. […]”
I don’t know much about these kinds of apps, but when I visit your game page, I don’t see any way to actually add it to the homepage on my iPhone. Is this something that iOS doesn’t allow, or is there another way to do it? The game looks pretty cool though :)
Installing the app on iOS is a pain point for users. If you have a significant iOS user presence it's a concern.
If Apple supported this API it would be much easier to convince stakeholders that PWA is enough.
You can do browser detection and show a dismissible pop up with instructions but it will still just confuse some users and others with scoff at the need to do that.
That’s interesting, thanks. I just did it successfully, I don’t think I’ve ever installed an app like this before. So I guess when I click it it’s just opening a browser window with no actual browser controls and then loading the site?
Why do they use the words progressive web app, seems like a fancy term for just saving a link to your home screen. Is there some additional benefit you get besides this shortcut? Does it do things a webpage does not once it’s been added to your home screen?
It basically is nothing more than a glorified shortcut. The installed app gets a custom load screen. It gets listed on the device installed apps list, and can be removed from there.
But there is nothing a PWA can do that a website can’t do. It’s all about Web APIs. Take push notifications (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...): they make more sense for an (PW)app, but a simple website can do them too (if given permission).
I understand your will to disable vibrations.
But thing is, right now I can’t think of how to offer that option properly. For instance, adding a Setting menu+icon just for that would be lame.
/*
Work around Firefox Mobile getting the hit target (clickable area)
of the game control buttons wrong, when the (bottom) navigation bar
gets hidden (when scrolling down).
See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1813213
and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70893056/mozilla-android-addressbar-conflict-with-sticky-button-on-bottom
and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40733062 ← thanks @ttymck for the bug report!
*/
if (/Mobile.+Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent)) {
self.addEventListener('resize', frameThrottle1(() => {
document.getElementById('metagame').style.position = (window.outerHeight > window.innerHeight)
? 'sticky'
: 'fixed';
}));
}
Word of mouth, mainly. Posted it on Reddit back then, things like that. It grew organically from that. And, although it’s far from being on top results on SERP (search engine result pages), some people do find it that way.
Also: because it’s so lightweight, it got included some years ago in the Moya app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nu.bi.moya), a popular messaging app in South Africa that is “data-free” for users (it does reverse-billing). Now half the players are South Africans!
It’s a Klondike Solitaire game. It used to bring ~$500/mo of advertising revenue, but that’s significantly down these days: I refuse to have a cookie/consent banner, so I refuse customized ads (in the UE, in some US states now, &c.)
Players do add it to homescreen. There is a non-intrusive button prompting them to do so, at the end of a game. People like to be able to play offline. Apart from that, I don’t use much PWA/browser features; no notifications, etc.
More info here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34483398 Happy to answer any question you may have! Happy to get some feedback too ;-)