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(I just added that warning to the main page in response to your feedback -- I don't know much about the cause. Might be your cache settings, or an issue with my code. One other person had had the same issue and I'd assumed it was a fluke before.) 

Oh no! I'm very sorry about that, I'm not sure what causes it. If you hold down the keys "E" and "Y" while pressing New Game, you can generate a generic 90%-complete save file with 2/3 puzzles solved.

For puzzle 3, your goal is to cycle 5 cards and play 61. Start by playing 21 on the left and discarding 13. Then, place 71 on the right and factor 24. From there, do what you can to play as many cycle cards as possible. Don't worry about which tiles you burn with 76, it won't matter.

I've added a warning to the game description, and will look into it next time I update the game. Thanks for letting me know.

I'm using an old version of Unity so I'm not certain I'll be able to release a compatible version. Sorry about that!

I cut it off more in Portrait so it'd look better with the narrower page. There are various small discrepancies like that which are more or less intentional.

You're absolutely right. I will fix that shortly.

Thanks for the feedback. I want keep v2 a bit tucked away and not oversell it, but I have now update these patch notes to explicitly tell people it's in the zip file.

Oh no! Thank you, I will fix it momentarily. [edit: Fixed.]

I will overhaul the sandbox in the next update (along with fixing other reported bugs), but I've been busy with other projects so it might be a while. (edit: Thanks for all the feedback, by the way!)

Oh right, I completely screwed up puzzle 4's word list -- like you said, I've made a fix already and will upload it shortly. The other differences were mostly intentional -- I wanted less ink usage and fewer videogame references for pencil-and-paper solvers. I'll add the blot to o3 though, thanks! And glad you enjoyed! 

Fooled! The listed word is indeed e6 (last year it was e5 Earth). The blot intentionally makes the 6 look like a 5.

Oops, I forgot to update the word list on puzzle 4 for portrait version! I need to remove that 0 and add m22. Good catch.

(So yes, you have completed everything, though there's a little sequel that I'll be posting an updated version of later this week. Anyways, glad you enjoyed it!)

I'm afraid it's just redundant... in fact, I'm actually finishing up an update which will clarify (on puzzle 0) that those are just hints.

The 144 is actually just for the  puzzles 1-12. Excluding 0, there are exactly 12 "words" per puzzle. If puzzle 12 is making sense, you probably found everything... but don't forget that 12 has 12 words too! (Hence the redundancy at the end.)

Thanks for the feedback, but nope it's correct: row 5 column 3 is part of the 6th leftover "AA". (I'm planning to change this part in the next update, it is admittedly rather weird and not grammatical.)

And v1.25 is also fine: the a17 clue is hidden under a blot, and the a7 clue was earlier in the list. (The clues are listed in order!)

Fourth level of Logs (warehouse)

Fourth level of Logs (warehouse)

I think you may have just written "LANKING". (The correct answer uses the C.)

By the way, the backwards rules are pretty consistent, despite being confusing: If you use the clues on the bottom-right, you can see that the canonical leftovers are, e.g., Drawer (d6) and Foe Carton (f9). These words don't need to make sense, since 12's category is "leftovers" not "parts of a message". Similarly, puzzle 0 can have words like "dew" because 0 has no category it needs to follow. I admit it's weird that these words only spell a message backwards (left-to-right) but it's consistent between puzzles 0 and 12 and I'm fairly confident it's better than the reverse (which I did try in an earlier version).

Oh wow, thanks for the feedback and for coming back to finish it! I found the first episode a while back, and it was one factor leading me to change Puzzle 11's title to match its category name.

You made good points about certain parts being unfair, but I'm hesitant to reverse IS/NOT/DEW on puzzle #0, or to add more hints to early puzzles like #3. However, I might be able to address most of your concerns just by adding a bigger hint for the bottom text! My current plan is to explicitly label them as "Hints" or "Initial Hints" in puzzle 0, or perhaps add a line of text to puzzle 0 like "Additional hints are at the bottom of each page". (Or perhaps an even more explicit tutorial on puzzle 0?)

I prefer this over hinting about the right-hand side for a few reasons:

• I've seen several players figure out Puzzle 2 without knowing which words were backward, just by using the hints at the bottom. [edit: Ah, I see you still got stuck on 2 after learning the hints.]
• I think it's actually great when the right-hand side is the last discovery. Some players, like the streamer Dwarfwoot, had a great time on puzzle 12 because they didn't realize the leftovers would be backwards until they started filling in the blanks.
• As you said, teaching about the hints on the bottom is super important. They help with puzzles 1 and 3, and make the word list order feel less arbitrary. Some players actually solved the whole book without using the hints, and then were confused and disappointed that they weren't a secret extra message to solve at the end.

What do you think? Would an "Initial Hints" label in puzzle 0 have been an adequate clue for you?

I used Inkscape, a crossword solver like https://www.quinapalus.com/qat.html, and https://www.palindromelist.net. I set the grids myself in graph paper, and typed them into a monospace text object in Inkscape. If you use Inkscape and don't want a monospace font I think you can do it using Split Text and Alignment tools.

Oh I forgot to mention -- because I think 12 Word Searches is best played digitally (too much erasing), I categorized it as a "Game" instead of "Physical Game" [edit: or "Book"]. If you do the latter, I imagine more than 25% of downloads will be the print version. If having two versions is too much of a pain, doing the printable version only is probably fine, it'll just be harder to see the whole page at once on computers. Also, I think I initially just had the landscape version during testing, and didn't make the printable version until I was ready to release the game. 

Awesome, it's always great to hear that I've inspired folks. I'm not a marketing guy or game publishing expert so I'm not sure how helpful I'll be, but here's what I can think of:

For making your game findable, use everything itch recommends -- thumbnail, screenshots, and tags. There's only a few dozen itch games tagged word-search so you might get a handful of players just by being on that list. Personally, I got initial traction for my book by sharing it in a puzzle-game discord where I was an existing user (mainly lurking and play-testing other people's games). Note that most places will either have rules against self-promotion or will be filled with spam, so you should mainly share via communities you have a connection to. Feel free to share it here on this thread when you're done.

Regarding landscape & portrait mode: 75% of downloads have been for the landscape version, which I imagine most folks want to play right in Chrome or Firefox's built-in annotators. But a printable version is nice to have too, as printable puzzle books are fairly rare on itch but there's a good-sized niche of folks interesting in them. Ideally, the printable version should be playable in black&white for folks like me who don't have a color printer at home.

In terms of game-design: If you're an amateur designer, err on the side of easier difficulty. An overly easy puzzle book can be a fun way to spend half an hour, but an overly hard one is frustrating and most people will quit. You can hedge your bets by putting hints in the back. And if your answers aren't as self-checking as 12 Word Searches, you'll want answers in the back too. And since some people find Rule Discovery frustrating, you might want a third section in the back that explains any unexplained rules. Check out Lok as a good example of this: https://letibus.itch.io/lok. In many cases, it is good to have a bunch of easy tutorial puzzles in your book in order to reinforce the mechanics in the player's mind and make rule-discovery more fair. (Don't make the player read your mind.) One way to design a hard-but-fair puzzles is to make it solvable in multiple ways -- for instance, in 12 Word Searches, you sometimes have a choice between searching the grid for plausible words or deciphering the clues and using those to determine what word you're searching for.

I will consider making it a bit easier, perhaps reducing how many copies of 37 they have. That said: if you find the right deck you should have no trouble.

What difficulty level are you on, Casual or Challenge?

Thanks! The 0 in puzzle 4 is because there's no famous US [redacted]s in August... but perhaps I should've just included a January one. Fair point about the bad grammar, I couldn't think of a good use for "aa" within the message.

Thanks! "Category"  wasn't meant to be difficult once you know the idea. Since other people have mentioned that too, I'll plan on refactoring 11 to use "Theme". I'm also hoping to eventually add a picture hint for puzzle 1 but I need to figure out how to implement it.

Thanks! You can send it to hoffman.jeremy##@gmail.com   where ## is the card that burns a tile and also removes all burn and freeze from the board.

FWIW when testing Efficient I finished Hard in 17 or 18 matches in just one try... though that was a few years ago. Tip: If you can solve battle 5 right off the bat, it should be reasonable. (But not easy!) Note that puzzle battles do not count toward your total.

Good point about the explosion, I'll see about adding some more visual effects, maybe some dust or something.

Intended. You can exit this screen using the Esc key.

The first 2 are intended behavior (INPUT_1.0 canonically has a single-digit display), the third I will plan on fixing next update. (Need to add new variable to save files.)

Oops, just realized I never replied. I added it as a cheat code: Toggle no-drag mode with Shift+D.

Mostly because the effects periodically got swapped around during development. It also helps to distinguish factors from mathematical constants, particular when I want to Ctrl+F for everything related to a certain factor (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_(programming)).

Yes, I wanted to reuse Factor Crafter's core concept and art to make something with more gameplay to it. I knew I wanted each n-stone to cost n currency and have all abilities of its factors. I originally considered Tower Defense, but it was hard for composites to be worth their cost. To make something like 11x5 be worth spending 55 currency on, I needed players to have limited stones per turn. This lead me to use cards. (Also I play a lot of card games.)

Sounds like you just made a small error somewhere, they should be a perfect match.

Thanks! Glad to see Relectric Roogaloo got into v2, that was exclusive to the extras from that Humble Bundle right?

Also, I really like the little trick for solving the Pokedex puzzle more easily -- I only spotted two my first time through, then realized how to find the rest.

Sorry, the old Unity files keep auto-updating and have become too much of a mess, I probably won't be making any changes to the game unless I do a big overhaul eventually.

Oh no, sorry about that! I guess the save system I used wasn't very robust. I'll see about adding a cheat code soon to skip ahead in endless (probably 25 at a time).

Oh neat, thanks! My email is [redacted]

Oh my gosh, thank you! I remember getting Puzzlecraft probably a decade ago now, and getting inspired to make some riddles for my (rather mediocre) 10 Puzzles project. Oh, and coincidentally I just ordered Betrayal a couple days ago -- didn't know you were involved with that until I googled it. Excited to play it this Halloween with my family.

Thanks! I was wondering where all the new folks came from.

Puzzle 5 can be solved logically, though finding the right steps is a bit tricky (and arbitrary).