Word Bomb

🎮 Overview

Word Bomb is a fast-paced Discord word game where players must submit real words that contain a randomly chosen letter prompt. Each round gets shorter as the bomb timer speeds up — hesitate too long or submit an invalid word and you lose a life. Lose all three and you're out!

Compete solo for practice or face off against others in multiplayer elimination matches.

📋 How It Works

🧠 Objective

Survive as long as possible by submitting valid words that include the given prompt before time runs out.

🧍 Game Modes

🟢 Solo Mode

You play alone against the timer.
No stats are recorded (practice mode).
Encourages word creativity and speed under pressure.

🔵 Multiplayer Mode

2–16 players compete turn-by-turn.
Last one standing wins the game.
Stats and win records are tracked and added to the leaderboard.

🔢 Gameplay Rules

❤️ Lives

Every player starts with 3 lives (🧡🧡🧡).
Fail to answer in time or give an invalid response? Lose 1 life.
Run out of lives and you're eliminated.

⏱️ Bomb Timer

The game starts with a set time per turn (e.g. 7 seconds).
The timer gets faster each round for added difficulty.

🎯 Prompts

A prompt is a 2–3 letter string (e.g. an, re, tri) randomly drawn.
Your word must include the prompt, be valid, and not already used.

Example Prompt: re
Valid words: read, rest, represent
Invalid: apple, tree (no re inside)

✅ Word Rules

Words are case-insensitive and can include hyphens (e.g. re-mix).
Words are validated against a master dictionary (shiritori_dict.txt).
No repeats: reused words are rejected (even from other players).

🔧 Game Flow

🏁 Starting the Game

Create a lobby using /wordbomb.
Host gets a menu to:
- Invite players (via dropdown).
- Customize settings like bomb speed and prompt range.
- Start or cancel the game.

🔗 Lobby UI Elements:

Join: ➕
Leave: ⬅️
Start: 🚦 (host only)
Cancel: ✖️ (host only)

📜 In-Game Turns

Each player sees:

The prompt and a random emoji.
Lives remaining.
Bomb timer (displayed in seconds).
How common the prompt is in the dictionary.

If they respond:

Valid + in time = survive, reduce future timers.
Invalid or slow = lose 1 life.

If eliminated:

Message sent: ☠️ {player} has been eliminated!
They’re removed from turn order.

🧮 Statistics & Leaderboard

📊 Tracked Stats:

Wins
Games Played
Win Rate
Total Characters Used
Average Word Length
Turns Played

At the end of every multiplayer game:

An embedded leaderboard is sent to both the game thread and the original channel.
Final stats are stored for all players using a StatsTracker.

🥇 Leaderboard Format:

🥇 Username
Wins: 10 / 20 | Win Rate: 50.0% | Chars: 123 | Avg Length: 6.2

🧠 Prompt Frequency System

Each prompt shows a "solve count":

-# This prompt has **16** solves in the dictionary.

This encourages strategic planning — easy prompts may be used up quickly!

Prompt frequencies are loaded from:

Dicts/prompt_frequencies.json

🧩 Word Validity

Normalization Rules:

Spaces become dashes: "word bomb" → "word-bomb"
Words are lowercased and normalized before checking.

Words are rejected if:

They don't contain the prompt.
They’re not in the master dictionary.
They were already played (by anyone).

👤 Tracking Per-Player Stats

During the game:

Every word used is tracked by player ID.
Stats are updated only for multiplayer games.
Solo games are for practice and do not affect stats.

🗃️ Data Files

Dicts/shiritori_dict.txt: full word list
Dicts/prompt_frequencies.json: prompt solve frequencies

🧪 Developer Notes

Class: `WordBombLobbyView`

Handles:

Join/Leave buttons
Lobby embed construction
Start/cancel logic
UI updates and restrictions

Function: `run_wordbomb_game(...)`