Copy Editor: A RegEx Puzzle Reviews

Not particularly good or bad. A strange mix of extremely easy and extremely difficult. The game introduces a lot of concepts without any explanation. If you're not experienced with regex, prepare to browse documentation. I was hoping for a better learning experience and have learned more by simply opening the easiest tutorials on Google.

This review is based on the early access version. I will update it accordingly when the game changes. Right now I would not recommend this game. It is promising and definitely fills a gap among educational games, but it is very incomplete. The UI is very basic and many features are missing or a bit clunky for the moment. There is no audio. There is some kind of background story in the form of a chat log which makes the overall experience more enjoyable than a regex tutorial. As far as content is concerned, some very basic regex concepts such as .* or ^ and $ are not very well explained. Some other things such as \w or lookahead/lookbehind or {n,m} matches are not covered at all. The level design needs more balancing and a better difficulty curve: there are 20 levels (plus some kind of unkillable final boss level) and I would consider most of them very hard for a regex beginner. A game such as Human Resource Machine does a far better job at increasing difficulty, teaching new concepts along the way, and restricting available options in the earlier levels so that the player does not get confused.

I really, really wanted to like this but it just misses the mark in too many ways. I've used Regex for decades so I wasn't impressed to discover useful functions gated behind a "do it the hard way first" system Who then decided to not sync the scrolling - WHY WOULD YOU NOT DO THAT!? Who decided to use a non-fixed-space font and/or not offer some highlighted for whitespace?????! The puzzles go south really quickly too - I think it's the 4th puzzle in (the Heart) which starts the rot - it's impossible to see spaces, \s behaves erratically (removing carriage returns 'sometimes??' In the end the solution is a mix of "counting characters" and guessing - zero sense of satisfaction in that - and the puzzles generally fall into "way too easy" and "fiddly and awkward". Note: I also notice questions and issues in discussions are met with "we've asked a developer to take a look at that" and no response ever comes back - so we can assume it's dead at this point and therefore it's a "Not Recommended" from me

The game already links to regex101.com - so the developer must know how to present a regular expression editor in a sensible way but decided against it. The font isn't mono-spaced, spaces are invisible and you have to switch the view to know what you are matching against. Additionally the left and right text view scroll for some unknown reason independent of each other - why would I ever want that? It's not a bad idea for a game, but crippling the tool in order to make it challenging can't be the right way to do it...

Addictive as hell! But you need to know the basics of Regex! Because unfortunately, the explanations are really bare-bones. (Reading the reviews, this put off a lot of people. Which is a shame: The Dev could just add more detailed, in depth explanations. All it costs is a bit of his time.) If you actually want to learn Regex, one step at the time, each step with a detailed explanation plus an interactive example, go here: https://regexone.com/ I find this the easiest, best resource to get started with Regex. Here are some other, free regex games alternatives, where you can learn something: This is super cute: https://www.therobinlord.com/projects/slash-escape Medium: https://www.jeffwofford.com/regex/ This is hard: https://alf.nu/RegexGolf Have fun.

Good concept, but missing the point - for now. In it's current shape, I can't recommend this game. However I believe that some tweaks with the levels would make it really cool. I will gladly change my recommendation to positive in the future, if the main issues are solved. The biggest problem I see right now is : It is too hard for Regex beginners, and too easy/uninteresting for people knowing them. (For context : I do know RegEx very well, and played the game on twitch with beginners to try and explain what they are. It was not easy) I think Copy Editor can be a very effective way for beginners to discover RegEx. For advanced users, not so much. So here are my suggestion to improve on this and make it beginner-friendly : - The very first level should be a simple search/replace form, without the complexity of the "\s" which was confusing for beginners. Also, I don't understand why we cannot use the space in the search form. Yes, "\s" is more powerful, but forcing it in the very first level feels like a big obstacle to me. In fact, I believe the game is missing at least 5 very easy levels at the beginning. - I used the [] syntax very early in the game, same for (), $1, *, + etc. These are introduced very lately in the game though. Sometimes I couldn't even think of a solution without using concepts that weren't introduced yet. This is a big problem IMO. It confuses the advanced user and frustrates the beginner. - Although I like the stars feature, I would not activate it until level 10-15 (and make it available for previous levels but only after this moment). The first levels are not solvable with more than a stars with so few concepts introduced so far. For a beginner, this might be frustrating. Some other remarks : - A monospace font would be much better for some levels (like the ASCII heart one). The spaces are hard to count. Marking them in the same fashion as in the forms would be great. - When I ALT-Tab and go back to the game, the layout of the forms change making them unusable until you try to move them. A bit annoying. (Note: I'm on Linux) - The chat is great but I would highlight it somehow to make sure people are reading. Especially with the "clear theme" level which felt like a bug. - A way to show the parts that have been changed would be VERY helpful for better debugging. I had to trick the forms so many times, it was very annyoing. - Please ! add a title screen. This feels very unfinished without it !

"This game is horrible. Cannot recommend it.".replace(/horrible\.\sCannot/, "great. Totally"); (Please read carefully :P)

This has the potential to be a really cool way to learn regex. It lacks in the "teaching" side of things though. Example, forth puzzle in, you've been show how to find whitespace characters and digits. To solve this puzzle you would need to know about quantifiers and using pipes. So it escalates quickly, and doesn't bridge the learning between, because of this, I can't recommend this for anyone wanting to "learn" regex, if you know regex though, it is fun and relaxing.

I use regular expressions occasionally, but not so often that I consider myself an expert. This game is ideal for people familiar with regex and looking for a little practice. I do not recommend this game to anyone interested in learning regular expressions from scratch, because the game does a terrible job of explaining basic concepts. Also, the game unnecessarily restricts the use of alternate solutions to puzzles. Ultimately, I do not recommend this game because it incorrectly claims to "teach" regex.

I'm tentatively giving this a thumbs up, because I think it could be a great game with improvements, and despite what I am about to say I do like this game. Right now I think that for someone with zero experience of RegEx (like myself), it's too difficult. And I realise this may make me sound like Im an idiot, lol but I can't even get past the first few levels. It's not that I don't think I could work them out eventually but I think there isn't enough tutorial to teach you what you need to be actually doing. As much as I hate to say it, I think the early levels need a bit more hand holding for people with no RegEx experience. Right now it feels a little too much like guess work and not enough like actually solving a puzzle. But the interface is good, and the colour schemes work. Everything you need access to is within reach and accessible. The font is large and clear and an early puzzle teaches you a keyboard shortcut for increasing/decreasing the font size (some puzzles require a specific font size.) The hints are O.K. Not exactly helpful but not unhelpful either. They are more like tips that could be applied to any puzzle, rather than clues to solving the specific puzzle you are on (though I don't doubt the tip is useful for that specific puzzle.) Also just for anyone who is interested in game length, there are 20 levels. Each level you attempt to gain three stars by using as few characters and rules as possible, but it does tell you that in order to get three stars you may need to learn more advanced RegEx and then come back later to reattempt the puzzle. In addition to those 20 levels there is a section for player made puzzles, and at the time of this review there is only one player made puzzle available. This game is in Early Access so I will definitely be revisiting as it progresses. I want to enjoy this game, it is unique and definitely worth checking out imo at the regular price.