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maladroit

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A member registered Nov 13, 2019

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lol! So obvious in retrospect.. cool game!

I'm pretty stuck on this level — is there a mechanic I'm missing with the small box in the bottom left?


As far as I can work out, I need to be able to reset the red stopper in the bottom right in order to exit the level. The assumptions I'm making are:

  • The red, blue and green blocks can only move left and right, not vertically
  • Once I'm round the corner, next to the exit, there's nowhere I can move the red blocks. 
  • The block in the bottom left can move anywhere in the bottom half of the level, but it can't go down a 1x1 corridor, which means it can't get into the top part between the red and blue blocks, and it can only block the right-angled corridor in the bottom right.

Confused!

Those false walls created one of the great indignities — the dawning realisation that I had actually reconstructed David Skinner's Microban 1 from a totally different starting level, and only on seeing that did I figure out the final manoeuvre to defeat it.

I think the current last level might have an unintended solution.. Mostly based on how quickly I solved it compared to the previous ones :)

My end result was:

sbbbs
bbbbb
bbbbb
sbbbs

And I didn't have to do a lot of conceptually-challenging silver block manoeuvring to get there

Really liked the addition of the final mechanic, as the enforced finishing position adds real complexity to the levels. (Reminds me of that one level in Stephen's Sausage Roll which seems weirdly easy until you realise that it's almost comically difficult to solve it and reach the exit tile)

Why do I need to right click and left click to shoot? It makes the game unplayable on a trackpad..

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Glad I came back to this — it's excellent. Top left took me a while but I finally cracked it!!

I think I got to the end (with the help of an elaborate diagram)? Is there a non-purgatory ending?

Finally finished this one! The last series of manoeuvres were extremely satisfying to puzzle out :)

Really fun — and very well designed.  I love games that pull off this sort of thing :)

I somehow managed to miss a subtle but vital mechanic in my first attempts. But when I came back this morning, it finally clicked! It's a very satisfying puzzle and impressively designed so that the simultaneous movement feeds into the puzzle as well as complicating it :)

Excellent stuff -- the end was really fun to figure out :)

The middle section took longest to deduce, but eventually we made our escape! Cool game :)

The source code is included in the html scripts and there doesn't seem to be anything in terms of win conditions, plus there's no player position on the level map:

https://pastebin.com/CmtiWzrG

Does that mean the plot might thicken? Awaiting new logs :/

Loved the bonus objectives!

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That was very cool — I ended up freestyling my way toward the solution but once I found it, the aha moment resonated backwards and made everything seem retrospectively obvious. Which I think is always a real design achievement in conceptually fiddly puzzles like this one! Aaand makes me hope you might explore the idea further in the future :)

I didn't use the top left section at all. Curious what the intended use of that bit is!

Lbh pna perngr n oevqtr npebff gur tnc gb gur ohggba ng gur gbc bs gur znc. Gura lbh whfg arrq gb trg gur oybpx va gur gbc evtug bss vgf yrqtr naq vagb gur oynpx G funcr. Gura lbh pna chfu vg hcjneqf naq npebff fb gung vg snyyf bhg bs gur G naq pna or chfurq npebff gur oevqtr ba gb gur ohggba.

That was a delightfully cursed puzzle  👍

This is one of my favorite games you've made -- really fun to figure out and the puzzle felt very handcrafted!

Gur bar guvat V jnfa'g fher nobhg jnf jurgure V tbg na havagraqrq fbyhgvba ol oevatvat n yrsgbire oybpx sebz gur zvqqyr ebbz vagb gur svany gjb ebbzf. (Vs gung vf gur vagraqrq fbyhgvba gura V guvax vg qbrf uvtuyvtug ubj gevpxl vg vf gb pbzzhavpngr snvyfgngrf va guvf fbeg bs zhygv-cneg chmmyr!)

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There are so many subtle mechanics here. Love it! I get the feeling that there probably multiple ways to get to the ending, but all of them sufficiently complex to feel a satisfying mastery of the mechanics.

PS

Someone should tell N-Step Steve about that dash feature

This was very satisfying to puzzle out, especially the bottom right corner. V qvq abgvpr gung gur tbny oybpx pna'g or  fuhagrq qbjajneqf vs gur gbc ynfre uvgf vg svefg, juvpu fyvtugyl pbashfrq zr nobhg gur fuhagvat zrpunavpf. (rot13)

I'm also missing gjb inevnoyrf, ohg V guvax lbh trg gur fgngr sebz hfvat gur cvat pbzznaq

So much puzzle in such a small space. Loved it!

Know what you mean! Logic could only take me so far until a vibes-based strategy took hold

Suitably confounded — a nighttime reindeer on a black background is totally within my powers, but I can't ever seem to get that center square to the right shade otherwise :/

What a cool puzzle an what an incredibly hard-to-tune instrument!

So good! The final a-ha moment is super satisfying :)

v much enjoyed Meatman's Meatstick Move

I think you've made some changes since I first played it, but the only ones that now seem to force using that mechanic are the level that introduces it and 'Out of the way'. Even so, the puzzles are still super fun!

I hear ya on the limitations of puzzlescript text, but maybe something like 'Press X to push a crate along an ink trail' communicates the idea better?

I see that you've modified level 5 to force players to use the intended mechanic (I also got through the whole game without using it!)

Maybe you could adjust the inter-level message to better introduce the idea?  I didn't realise that "Sending ink trails (X)" meant I could push crates along ink trails.

It's a really cool little game, hope you keep making them :)

I am become Congamonger, the party prolonger, the dancefloor thronger, strong were the lines that got longer, all conquered.

10/10

This was fun! The little micro-levels do a good job of introducing the mechanics (I'd maybe try to communicate that boxes can push boxes as well, which is slightly non-standard) and the overall puzzle design is 👍

Hope it's the first of many games :)

The visual design is beautiful, but the mechanics don't mesh very well. The timer feels a bit arbitrary, as you have such limited control over the character that it's not really speed-dependant. And that means that the level designs either make the timer irrelevant or just unfair if it slows you down right as you've got to the end. The point is that the gameplay challenge is click-jumping at the right moments, which doesn't really have anything to do with racing against the clock in the way you've designed it.

On all levels with moving things or blinking platforms, it seems like it would make sense if player death reset the level to the same starting state. It feels frustrating when you're stuck in a bad cycle and have to try to kill yourself at the right time to get into a good cycle so you can actually finish the level. Other games with this sort of mechanic are much more deterministic.

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I think the puzzles are pretty cool, and I'm intrigued to explore the mechanics. I love puzzle games that trust the user to discover interactions, but I think a few of the levels I've encountered so far end up making the solution space large enough that figuring out what the new mechanic does is quite daunting.

For example, Popsicle Stick appears to be introducing a new type of wall block in the top right, but a similar level without that addition would already be quite fiddly to solve. What ends up happening is that it's tricky to even get the blocks into position to explore what that new block might do — I still don't know! — and I'm simultaneously wondering if it's not actually a new block but just a design element that's not part of the solution at all. In the end I figured out how to solve it by moving the blocks around each other, but I still don't know what that red square in the wall was supposed to do, if anything.

Compare this to something like Bonfire Peaks, where new mechanics are often introduced with a level that contains a very small solution space based on what you already know, so you realise quickly that the level is going to be impossible unless you there's a new interaction you've not considered, and then the level design is constrained enough that the possible-but-not-previously-considered interactions are limited. Once you know the mechanic exists and what it is, the game then starts riffing on it and complexifying it.

There are a lot of cool ideas in your game so far and I want to work my way through it, but the introductions of mechanics are acting like roadblocks at the moment.

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I'm baffled by the red X introduced on level 4 — I cannot seem to work out from context what the win condition is supposed to be..

I just figured it out — but I think that the level that introduces the mechanic is maybe not the most effective communicator of the mechanic

What a delightfully cursed experience — the things these poor sokofolk endure working in the puzzle warehouses!

What a cool idea! The last level was an absolute odyssey :)

It's not needed to solve 8 (from what I remember!)  but can happen accidentally as you're shuffling things around. I won't spoil 7 for you, but  lemme know if you want another hint in due course :)

I love puzzles with a punchline — some of these levels are very funny!

I was very thankful on behalf of delivery-sheep that it was just boxes. In olden puzzle times, the poor sheep would have been carting around wolves, goats and cabbages, desperately trying to police the combinations of livestock/produce that could be left on the shore while another was in transit ;)