Wow, thanks a lot for investing that much time in my game! Great to hear you enjoyed it.
This is my first 3D game in a looong time, and in my haste I saw no great way to do a grid, so I agree the grid visual is unpolished.
And others agree with you that the font is indeed suboptimal. I do plan on polishing the game and adding some final worlds, and I will experiment overhauling all text with less curvy fonts then :p (While trying to maintain that magicy, swishy feel.)
As with most things, puzzle design is just practice.
Earlier this year, I released a huge puzzle game (Square Ogre). Even though I can now see the flaws in it, working on a big puzzle game for several months taught me all sorts of things:
- Not too many levels per world (overwhelming)
- Everything can be broken into smaller chunks (so do it)
- Build all mechanics/ideas first and then keep the best ones in the best order (instead of trying to do everything right the first time)
- If it takes too long to explain your core rule, it’s too complicated. (As you said, I think the core rules for this game are … on the edge of the maximum complexity.)
Additionally, I use a simulation to help me out. It can spit out randomly generated puzzles, following strict requirements I set. I use that as a starting point for inspiration and difficulty curve. (Because actual random puzzles are usually quite ugly and either obvious (1-2 moves) or impossible.)
If you’re really interested, I always write these way too detailed devlogs about my projects: Devlog (on Pandaqi Blog)
Again, thanks for the feedback!