itch.io

I'll just say that the theme is a bit more specific.

Fixed! Thank you.

Thanks, should be fixed now. (Certain input is now frozen while playing a card. Hopefully no obscure interactions will softlock battles -- I'll do more testing later.)

Oops, I meant 71!

Oh, that's the one combination I just added last update, and I forgot to test it! I have now nerfed that combination from {29, 8, 8, 13, 13} to {29, 30, 13, 13, 13}, which I've confirmed is possible to beat consistently (5 out of 5 times, with a certain well-rounded deck). 

(I also fixed a bug where stabilized [0] could not be discarded.)

Sorry about that! I've shortened the filenames (and changed the description earlier) to hopefully make it more clear. (But I'm leaving the old versions at the top of the list, in the hope that new players will play that first.)

EDIT: Thanks! Glad to hear it!

Version v2.0.4 and earlier:

 -  Puzzle 5 misplaced the "T H _ _ E".

Version v2.0.3 and earlier:

 - Puzzle 9 has an extra E in the grid.

Thank you! Good catch with that E, I'm removing it now. [edit: Removed, for v2.0.4] I'm happy to hear that the last puzzle (presumably) allowed for easy error-correction.

Thanks! Sorry for any lost achievements! Both should be fixed now. There might be a one-time loss of achievements when you first play the new version.
(Achievements were accidentally stored in Playerprefs, which wasn't getting saved.)

(Also, I changed the game to save only at scene transitions and such, instead of every time something changes. This does not let you cheese the 20-battle achievement.)

I'd like to keep the solution a bit harder for people to find, so I'm going to hide this thread. Thanks for the bug-report!

Good catch! I've now fixed the tweezers. (Although there's still a visual bug where they appear to be usable.)

If the screen turned white and Esc lets you exit, the crash is intentional.

Good catch! I'm now testing a tweak for 29-stone: "stays in hand [when played]" ---> "cannot be discarded". This limits that deck's effectiveness in the tournament and final battle.

Sorry about that! Thanks for letting me know.

(I upgraded the save system from "playerprefs" to "indexedDB" a year or two ago and tried to maintain save compatibility but maybe I messed up. Alternatively, you might have fully cleared your browser cache in a way that wipes all indexedDB data.)

It appears to be working correctly. It should continue copying the effect(s) corresponding to your current energy. In this case, quite a few effects...

I can't believe I got stuck on the upper-right corner and had to come back a day later and restart to find it!

Shockingly fast solo solve by AerionBlue: https://www.twitch.tv/aerionblue/video/2383145552
Absolutely tore the intended experience to shreds. Very entertaining to see them ignore the given words entirely on puzzle 9 (around 01:18:22).

Glad you enjoyed. Zodiac is in there twice: One is ⅃-shaped (on the right-hand side), the other is circular (on the left-hand side), crossing other paths diagonally. You probably got the easier one early on and forgot about it.

Oh no the final letter disappeared too quickly, I was still speculating about the redactions

Ah true. I think he meant the smallest absolute value.

(Note: The solution is not 49-stone. I might remove that later as it is sort of a red-herring.)

Very good points. I probably need to give the later boards more interesting shapes in order to weaken stone-spamming strategies (both yours and the opponent's) while improving strategies like fire and ice.

Regarding the uselessness of large stones like 83: The intent was that most players will not figure out the 77 combo, but will get -1 stone, so they might use -83 in their deck. And 89 is intentionally hard to use because they can potentially lead to very boring games.

Glad you enjoyed the 0 puzzle!

Second post by Forever angel, which also got caught in the spam filter:

I became really frustrated after some point(and even more frustrated when itch io didn't save my post). While first levels feel like they are about outsmarting opponent and finding a unique approach based on some idea for everyone, last prime masters feel like just ridiculously overpowered gem-generating machines with no-matter-how-many-cause-it-almost-infinite-energy that you can only cheese with some very specific decks. 

My approach for 71 and 79 was "23, 43, 77 and many 59-s", that was not any fun, I beat one level immediately after another first try without changing my deck, what's the point? And while later it stopped working, it was only cause almost everything stopped working and I wanted to drop game cause of 83 and 89. Especially 89, it just stresses you out and then when you beat it goes like "haha, this gem is useless for you cause you have only 85 energy and need of 43-s makes this deck almost useless against thing that just spam about 20 gems on board in first 3 turns". I beat 83 and 89 with some recombinations of only 67-s and 1-s, it was not fun at all,  there are many cool and interesting gems but it felt like I was getting punished for trying to use anything interesting. Almost all gems from second half don't give a **** about what is on the board they interact with your decks and cards, board-control and right placing gems becomes meaningless, all effects of early-game gems are countered by 23-s, things from lab are cool but they are usually used as "yet another 7 cause I have only 3 of them in my library" or something like this(and for getting 73 and 0, that was fun to figure out). I understand that my problems can be nothing near objective, but I just really liked this game but also became frustrated with it and if this can be somehow fixed I would be really happy.

P.S. Any hints for 97 would be highly appreciated :)

Thanks for the feedback, Forever Angel! Sorry I didn't check the spam filter for 7 months, itch doesn't notify me about it.

Ah, that is indeed the question. The lab holds the tools and the clues.

Finally got 303! Just took a couple more tries.

Oh man, defeating the 11 guy was such a cool surprise. Great mechanics all around -- the 100s were a good choice. High score: 302

Not a typo, but it is unfortunately ambiguous -- you just have to choose a different A.

(small spoiler) Unlike the other letters, W  is slightly nonstandard, potentially requiring some knowledge of <rot13> pbzchgre fpvrapr </rot13>. 

(I haven't solved the final challenge yet, even though I thought I understood every letter.)

Nevermind, I solved W. Wow!

Really fun so far! I think I've got everything except W and maybe B. Is there possibly a mistake or inconsistency with W? I found a way to get [3]50 = 40-30, which feels close. (And [0.7419]50 = 40-30, which is arguably true, lol.)

Thanks! 

Yes, the L is always hidden. In case you missed it (though it sounds like you didn't), you can logically deduce it by using the L10 clue. You can also deduce it in puzzle 12 with no ambiguity (if you know "_acking any"). Early versions of the book had another hidden leftover in puzzle 5, but I removed it when remaking that puzzle. If I do another update, I might foreshadow the mechanic early on using a partially-covered leftover letter.

Here's the solution for weak tree(3) that helped me find a similar solution in my game: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3837501/before-the-current-lower-bound-... (Oh, and I should also credit my younger brother, who told me about this problem in the first place. He was already familiar with this solution, which helped me test the game initially.)

Sorry for the delay, it's fixed now. (A couple days ago, actually.)

Yep! I tested it right before uploading. I expect that Ultra is very difficult now, but I didn't find it too difficult when using the classic tree(3) solution as a starting point.

True, but I believe that this is equivalent to weak tree(3) -- just ignore the trunks! (However, there may be some slight differences between the two once I use the proper inf-embedding algorithm [for determining uniqueness].)

[edit: To clarify, the trunk on the big tree and the subtree essentially cancel out, because every non-trunk branch has a parent branch. So if we removed trunks from all the trees, nothing would change.]

Nope, Bobogram was way after (and it didn't consciously influence any updates). I was inspired by ABDEC's predecessor LOK -- which just came out on Steam today! Big fan of ABDEC as well,  though I regretfully looked up answers on two puzzles.

(First prototype of 12 Word Searches = Dec 2022,      Abdec releases and I play it = March 2023,      12 Word Searches v1.0 = Oct 2023,    I play Bobogram = June 2024)

Nice! Laminated seems like a great option, to make erasing a non-issue (like Letibus puzzlebooks). Not sure how well it'll work for a classroom, but I'm curious to find out!

It was my mistake. Currently, the trivia question's actual answer is infinite, of course.

The infinite algorithm was unintended, resulting from the difference in uniqueness rules between this game and the Weak Tree Function. I'm hoping to patch it out later today.   [edit: Finally fixed it, about a week later.]

It's intentional, the goal was to make that part easy (no wrong answer) since one D is mostly covered. Though I can see how it could be unwanted. (Puzzle 2 has a similar ambiguity with RA___ that I tried to avoid but can't.)