Hardback, the deck-building word game

[quietmint]

Another word game is now available in beta on BGA! If you enjoyed Letter Tycoon, we think you'll love Hardback. Each player has their own personal deck of letter cards, using them to spell words, gain coins and prestige, and acquire new cards. The twist here is that any card can be wild. There's also a challenging solo/co-operative mode.

Give it a try today: https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=hardback

[lvlc]

I played a live game yesterday with a friend. I would love to play this asynchronously with strangers, but if I want to start a game, I always get an error that it is language dependent.
I tried it with no restrictions at all. My account is set to English.

[quietmint]

The language restriction is handled by the BGA main site. I'm not entirely sure how this part works, but I believe it means you need to add "English" to the list of "Spoken Languages" on the following page: https://boardgamearena.com/preferences?section=lang

Screenshot 2021-03-21 183917.png (114.46 KiB) Viewed 2887 times

If it is there already, you could try removing English and then adding English again.

If that still doesn't work, please contact the BGA support team: Go to https://boardgamearena.com/support > My Account > Account Information > My problem has not been solved. Mention that you are not able to create a turn-based table for this game and provide the error message you receive (whatever the message you mention about English language restriction).

[ptitpoulpe]

Will it be possible to get a french version of the game ? Could help if you need to adapt it.

[quietmint]

Right now I have no plans for languages other than English.

The best hope is for German. The publisher did create an official German-language version of this game, but indicated it did not meet sales expectations (there was little interest in physical, printed copies). I'm not opposed to adding a German version on BGA, but I don't have any German dictionary files for spell checking valid/invalid words. I don't speak German, so even if I find a dictionary file, I don't know how to evaluate it to know if it's any good or not.

There is almost no hope for other languages. For French, etc., there's an additional problem that the game itself would need to be modified. The benefits assigned to each letter card would change (to reflect the common/rare letters in that language) and maybe even new letter cards would be needed (for example, would the French game ignore accent marks completely or create separate cards for E and É? If you add new cards, how does this affect the distribution of the existing cards?). Further, it's almost certain that any non-English letters like Icelandic thorn Þ would be missing from some/all of the fonts we're using for the letter cards.

[AtrusThot]

Thank you for the game, it is awesome.

Scrabble and all other word-based games just ignore accents. This seems like the simplest and more efficient way.
I think that as long as there's the same letters in both languages, and both players use the same language, there is no need to use different cards : distribution is different and may give one language over one other, but since we decide wich one to use before playing, both assets and hindrance weight equally on every players.

So, maybe, while still in beta, we could try french ? pretty please with a ribbon on it ?

Then again, the game is really pleasant as it is, even for a froggy like me !

[quietmint]

Actually, Wikipedia disagrees about accents in Scrabble. It seems to vary for each edition of the game and each language.

Anyway, in the case of Hardback, the distribution of cards is NOT the issue. In fact, all the letters are roughly equal (except Starter cards). Some genres have 2 copies of Q or X for example, even though these letters are very uncommon in English! It is because this game allows any card to be wild, so the distribution of letters doesn't matter much. Instead, the cost and benefits on a card are (partially) reflecting how common a letter is. This is why the cards themselves would still need to change, even if you ignore accent marks.

And still the problem of the dictionary. I don't speak French well enough to evaluate some big French word list to know if it's good enough for use in this game.

[TheOtherJason]

I really enjoyed the game (which we played three times in a row), but have one small quality of life suggestion: allow undo on ink removal. I say this because of the nice feature of planning your turn out while other players are playing. This grinds to a halt when another player might play a "timeless classic" card. Or they might take your TC card. Or someone else played one, then it's another player's turn before yours. You can't tell for sure if you will have the TC available to you.

All of that means if you remove an ink and try to set up your word, you might have wasted that ink removal. Because your turn comes and the available letters have changed. But if you could undo the ink, you could go ahead and try to make your word ahead of time without worry that you've screwed up.

[UmaMira]

Really Thank you for this adaptation Quietmint, me and my group really enjoy this game.
I hope some french dictionnary will be implemented but I see in your previous comments you don't have plan for that (so sad )
So can it be possible to give us the manual validation like in the game letter tycoon ? So we can play with french words and validate between us, even if the cards / points / etc are not adapted, we will deal with it and really enjoy to play

[AtrusThot]

That is a really good idea !
Even for english games : there are always words we use that escape the dictionnary !