Ghost That Haunts Your Puzzles

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21

Yeah, that’s a puzzlescript thing I appreciate and that I planned to implement at some point. I do need to save the state of the entire world for that to work (I’m only storing reverse moves right now) which means I have to make sure I’m not leaking global state anywhere. So it’s a little work, but not like a ton.

If that turns out to be way harder for some technical reason I’m not thinking of, I’ll make sure to put in a dialog for restarting (but that’s not foolproof, since you can mash your way through it).

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Oh man, the puzzles are short enough that my initial gut reaction is that I’d rather accidentally restart a few times than have to confirm every time I wanted to restart (I… get grumpy about extra button presses), but I’d probably have to think about it and if in your shoes would likely experiment with it first before fully committing to it. See, I have a gift for making things much more complicated than they likely need to be :slight_smile:

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I’m thinking five or six presses to confirm a restart, just to make sure the player really wants it.

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24

You have to type a randomly chosen word before every restart

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25

this is where that maligned ‘hold to confirm’ action will save your bacon

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Oh, good point. I’ve now removed the restart button. You just have to hold the “undo” button to confirm you want to restart. Once it undos all the way back to the beginning, that’s when you’ve completed the “hold to confirm”.

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27

Alright, updated the build with a gentler curve (up to level 10; levels after 10 are not necessarily in order) and the new animations. I think this should be much more approachable.

I do teach things in a slightly different order now, too. For reference, the old level 2 is the new level 9 (but not all levels made that big of a jump).

The old levels 4 and 5 are off the scale, past level 10. 4 is probably pretty close (15ish) and 5 is maybe 20ish.

I’ll start trying to implement my laundry list of level ideas, then I’ll add more polish when I know what I’m looking at (and what the level ideas require).

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It’s definitely a lot easier than it was, but I’ve seen enough friends bounce off my previous puzzle games that I’m fine with it.

I’m hinting complexity pretty early in this level sequence even if the levels themselves aren’t too complex. It’s pretty rare that I quit playing a puzzle game for being “too easy” in the beginning, especially if it hints at cool upcoming interactions.

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Got a friend who hadn’t tried it yet to try it, and he mostly breezed through the first 10, calling a couple “tricky” and only getting stuck on the out-of-sequence ones, so it seems like it’s in a better place.

He’s pretty decent at puzzles, though. I think I’ll have my sister try it when I’ve fleshed it out more. She’s very smart but she doesn’t play many video games, so that will give me a good sense of what assumptions are being forced on the player that I’m not fully aware of.

Small snags at the beginning are sort of death marks for puzzle games. It’s very easy to lose a player until they’ve played a decent number of levels and they’re more invested.

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I played through v 0.1.1 (btw the fullscreen button conceals the version which is annoying). I gave the levels names because it was confusing to read the other feedback and then work out the levels had been renumbered

Level 1 <Movement/teleport tutorial>

extremely boring because I know about multisided things already. a good place to introduce blocked exits?

Level 2 <Block pushing tutorial>

ha ha, off the side you go

Level 3 <Key tutorial>

So this one stopped me for a bit, I didn’t realise how pushing a block into a wall would unlock it. Plus the surplus blocks took me a while to work out I could ignore them. I’d remove them!

Level 4 <Pocket dimension>

the [X] block is kind of untidy, I understand it’s for the rotational symmetry but it could just as easily be a wall/void. I didn’t like how the pocket dimension also had rotational symmetry, so there was a ‘wrong’ winding to move the block (which naturally was the first one I took). going through it a second time for the [O] was boring

Level 5 <Shoving at range>

Good! Enjoyable! the exit seemed to not be in the right spot? more centred?? more… S Y M M E T R I C A L?

Level 6 <Duplicator tutorial>

sure. not really excited by trial and error puzzles/mashing the undo button

Level 7 <Duplicator blocking>

The first puzzle I had to reason backwards from the end state! Maybe change the colour for inactive arrows?

Level 8 <Combination lock>

fine. I didn’t understand why the parking area to the right was a pocket dimension instead of a room, looks like there was enough horizonal space?

Level 9 <Duplicator gotcha>

sure. easier than Level 6

Level 10 <Teleportable>

ugh I hated walking all the way around from lower teleporter to upper teleporter, why are the walls to the south/southwest/west there? so it can’t be moved? the top area feels too large. this was a puzzle where pressing the keys took longer than thinking about it, solving the puzzle was not as interesting as finding the shortest path

Level 20 <tele-Teleportables>

hard stuck for a while. the [X] lock seems pointless (mirror symmetry?). I spend a long time learning the teleporter blocking rules and feedback in the lower right corner. the cutouts in front of the locks were tedious to get past! I didn’t really learn anything except to pay attention to red/orange lines more

Level 30 <Make mine a double>

there were so many things I tried which failed, mostly because I couldn’t visualise what was in the pocket dimension and would push something in that then jammed up retrieving something else. frustrating to figure out a solution that involved moving the first teleporter one square down and finding that, because of the unblocked sides, putting either teleport into the other was a one-way trip. really enjoyed pushing them off into the void when they were empty!

Level 50 <Heart 2 Heart three Heart omg>

the top duplicator gotcha irked me, in fact I feel like both the gotchas only lengthen the puzzle without making it harder. I didn’t get to feel clever moving a heart straight off an arrow. I like how the solution and the level mirror symmetry didn’t line up (spent 80% of my moves in the south)

Level 51 <Lockdown>

sure. repetative! the same steps used for both sides isn’t very exciting

overall I would play the heck out of this when you release it

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Thx for the feedback. Love the idea of changing the arrow graphic when they’re blocked. Level 10 is different already! Will go through the rest of the feedback when I’m in front of my computer.

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32

I’m not sure I was able to use the same steps on both sides, so maybe you found something I didn’t! The steps are similar, but there’s some positioning differences the second time through that I didn’t find obvious when I beat it.

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old → new
1 → 3
2 → 9
3 → 8
4 → 20
5 → 30
101 → 50
102 → 51

Although levels changed beyond simple renumbering too.

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they were exactly the same for my solution

GtHyP-51
GtHyP-51737×417 119 KB

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35

Nice ty I think I can fix this

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FWIW that was how I solved it as well.

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Yeah my brain was definitely over complicating it, but I also found a way force my solution (which has cooler steps) and also simplify it a bit, so good on both fronts.

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It’s gonna take a while to make puzzles for this game btw – there’s a ton of design space here. I’m really enjoying making them though. We’ll see how long that lasts :slight_smile:

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39

Still chugging away at puzzles. Sitting at about 25 right now, but definitely still more design space to explore. I’m getting better at understanding how to design puzzles in this thing, I think. There’s some pretty complicated implications sometimes, and it’s tricky to limit certain things.

I recently implemented this corner case (spoilers on mechanics):

lazy_load
Copying a portal that loops to the room its in effectively makes infinite copies of the room!

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41

New demo!

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