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#2 Puppeteer and #3 Puppet.

But also because Puppet and Puppeteer are a two card pair in a four villager line (#9, #1, #2, #3), if you have >5 health, you are guaranteed to get one of them and have health remaining by stabbing the middle two villagers, #1 and #2! Then you get the other one!

Why use brain when you have knife?

Do you remember what Chance was? The board is solvable if chance was a knight or bomb.

NVM. Board is solvable even if I don’t know.

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This is a great example of a board where ‘playing safe’ will ruin you.

Right away, Alchemist is MVP, and the board has two overall states, determined by 4. No corrupted characters is real, and plague is fake, and poisoner is sandwiched with a drunk and minion and demon. But the issue with that is the Knitter who would be telling the truth in right in the middle of where the sandwich would have to be. Assuming she is lying, I could work out the evil configuration. Or option 2, 4 is lying. and #1 pointing at 4 with so many potential lies on the board makes 4 a really good candidate for a stab.

If you can pivot from a wrongful kill into a victory then it is worth it to save plague to validate on a known corrupted.

Stab Knight 3 because protected by Alchemist and by a visible outcast and hope is not a drunk. Safe.

Flying stab 4 without the plague check because there could be five lies on the board, and up to 2 corruptions out of range of alchemist, making 8, 9, and 1 suspect. Also 6 could be minion in disguise and if there are no corruptions plague dies and I get to know a free good. Baa revealed.

7, 8, 9, and 1 are ALL tagged for lying.

The way start order works is that poisoner poisons a victim before plague doctor selects a good villager to corrupt. Unless poisoner is sandwiched on both sides or alchemist cures, a game with poisoner and plague will have two corruptions because plague will find someone. Alchemist, MVP that he is, has eliminated most of the board where corruptions could be. Which means between those four we have 2 corruptions, 1 poisoner, and 1 chancellor or drunk and fake outcast. No matter how you slice it, 4 lies.

#7 gets stabbed because they would have been cured if corrupt, and #7 can’t be drunk if you work through the logic (see next paragraph). revealing Chance.

(#7 can’t be drunk because if you work through the logic, #6 or #2 outcasts must be fake. If #6 PD is fake, then it isn’t poisoner because #5 would be corrupt. #6 chance would remove 1 corruption but both #8 and #1 are lying and they are split so poisoner couldn’t get both. That confirms #6 is real. If #2 is fake and #7 is drunk then #8 must be chance to be by an outcast and #2 poisoner poisoning #1. But that would mean #9, that plague must have corrupted, is telling the truth. so #7 cannot be drunk.)

#1 is flagged as good but corrupt because #9 is lying.

The following three scenarios are left:

[8E,9G,1G,2G] is valid with 8Poison

[8G,9E,1G,2G] is valid with 9Poison

[8D,9D,1G,2E] is valid with Bomb-Poison, and 8 or 9 drunk. 1 can’t be drunk in this scenario because 3 would have been poisoned.

Drunk is going to screw me over if I don’t eliminate the possibility. I have 10 health.

Stab at random #8 and #9 and take the five health penalty. Use plague on the other and stab if not corrupt. If both corrupt kill Bomb.

Edit: Fixed Logic error. It’s hard when I don’t have the board to manipulate!

Here’s how it works for adjacent pairs! (Side highlight: crazy round with Pooka, Poisoner, and Plague and zero corruptions.) (BTW Knitters in current version cannot lie about 3 or 4 pairs. If you see a knitter claim 3 or 4 they are telling the truth!)

Solved it! Yes, the above is a softlock. The victory exit is in the lower right!

I just wanna verify that this is a softlock.

I’d also like to be spoiled about if the two lefthand bent pipes never touch at any point in the solution.

I think I’ve identified a bug in post-game after the victory screen where corrupted baked villagers are correctly lying but aren’t displaying as corrupt when you flip the facedown cards. I only think this is a postgame error.

#8 Lover is the Pooka. Pooka is a demon and can’t share a role with a villager like minions can. #5 Baker is known good, so #9 must be minion or villager.

#2 Alchemist cured #9 Baker/Jester (Corrupted by Pooka) and either #1 Knight or #4 Medium who was corrupted by #7 Plague Doctor.

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The way I would have played this round is flip #1 through #9 in order. I’d flag #8 for lying, because Pooka can’t be an outcast or baker for the reason given above. Pooka is not #4, #5, #6, #7, #9

Next priority is figuring out if the lovers are doppelganger and villager and one of the visible outcasts is a minion. Assuming so, if #8 is lying, then #3 must be doppel and telling the truth. If so, then Pooka must be #2, #1 is corrupt, #4 is not corrupt, and #7 is minion and didn’t corrupt anyone… but then why is 8 lying with no source? Scratch that. Okay #7 corrupted #4, bomb is the minion, #2 is pooka, but wait why is #8 still lying with no source? That means no doppelganger in game. #6 and #7 are real outcasts.

So now that I know #7 is real, I use plague doc on #8, who is deffo lying. Comes back as not corrupted. I’d then stab Pooka and minion for double-claiming lovers with Pooka.

I don’t see this listed in the tags or description, so I am going to put it in a comment, but levels become timed challenges after the tutorial section.

The time was quite generous at first and I never really struggled, but I prefer casual, no pressure puzzles, so I put this one down before I progressed much because I could tell it wasn’t going to be my cup of tea. I didn’t touch endless mode in Raide, for instance. If timed challenges are a dealbreaker for you like they are for me, this might not be your game.

Some more statistics!

The rarest type of Evil combination is Pooka with 2 non-minion minions. I have only recorded one of those, and I secretly wonder if it was a mistype and that game doesn’t exist?

I also haven’t played a Lilis game which has both a minion and a puppeteer. I wonder if that combination is impossible?

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Once you get into regular ascensions, on average there are 2.52 evils per round yielding 885 points.

Beginners average about 970 points per 7 round 0 loss ascension, which works out to 12 extra points per round (85 in 7 rounds) which means on average each evil is killed with 0.5 cards still face down. In short, beginners are flipping all the cards before trying to kill their first evil.

An expert playing with the intention of 0 loss (no random strikes!) but doesn’t mind taking chances averages roughly 1300 points per 7 round 0 loss ascension. They score 59 extra points per round ascension (416 in 7 rounds), which means on average each evil is killed while 2.3 cards are still face down. An expert is often taking their first evil out with only half or a few more of the cards flipped. (The standard deviation for a 7 round ascension is about 197 points, so the evil composition matters a lot!)

I confirmed the minimum score per ascension is 350 points: 7 perfect solo Pooka games.

And by restart scumming for only 4 Evil Puppet games and losing 3 on purpose after killing 3 evils, I was able to score 3090 points in one ascension. I only tried once, so with some luck, I think a score of 3250+ is possible.

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My revised Evil ratios after tripling the amount of games is

Minion_____ 27% 86

Twin Minion 14% 45

Witch______ 24% 75

Shaman_____ 16% 52

Poisoner___ 17% 55

Chancellor_ 22% 69

Puppeteer__ 17% 53

Puppet_____ 16% 49

Baa________ 36% 115

Pooka______ 31% 97

Lilis______ 33% 105

If only itch’s search was a bit better at finding similar games!

Hard, great progression, great tutorialization.

I had to replay the first few levels over a period of a few days to really nail down the mechanics to avoid frustration, but it was worth it.

This is the first game since Gate’s Give Up the Ghost that I was fairly, yet severely challenged to figure out all the new mechanics.

Noa, the user who made this puzzle set also made a one-room brain teaser for the confounding calendar called “>” that is also worth checking out.

I played 100 games in standard Ascension 100+ and recorded how many of each demon and minion appears.

Minion: 24%

Twin Minion: 13%

Witch: 21%

Shaman: 12%

Poisoner: 18%

Chancellor: 35%

Puppeteer: 17%

Puppet: 16%

Baa: 33%

Pooka: 33%

Lilis: 34%

Chancellor and Witch are over-represented while Shaman is under represented.

I also broke down how often each minion appears with a particular demon

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Minion with Baa: 4/33 12%

Twin Minion with Baa: 4/33 12%

Witch with Baa: 10/33 30%

Shaman with Baa: 4/33 12%

Poisoner with Baa: 4/33 12%

Chancellor with Baa: 12/33 36%

Puppeteer with Baa: 5/33 15%

Puppet with Baa: 5/33 15%

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Minion with Pooka: 16/33 48%

Twin Minion with Pooka: 4/33 12%

Witch with Pooka: 5/33 15%

Shaman with Pooka: 4/33 12%

Poisoner with Pooka: 2/33 6%

Chancellor with Pooka: 8/33 24%

Puppeteer with Pooka: 1/33 3%

Puppet with Pooka: 1/33 3%

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Minion with Lilis: 4/34 12%

Twin Minion with Lilis: 5/34 15%

Witch with Lilis: 6/34 18%

Shaman with Lilis: 4/34 12%

Poisoner with Lilis: 12/34 35%

Chancellor with Lilis: 15/34 44%

Puppeteer with Lilis: 11/34 32%

Puppet with Lilis: 10/34 29%

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Pooka, Lilis, and Baa were evenly balanced at 1/3rd each.

Chancellor, Minion, and to a lesser degree Witch were more likely to be a “+1”: appear in games which already had another minion in them, contributing to their frequency. Shaman and Puppeteer/Puppet were more likely than other minions to be the only minion it their round.

Lilis overall had the most minions at 67 in 34 games, followed by Baa at 48 in 33 games, and Pooka had the fewest minions at 41 in 33 games.

If you are looking for a challenge, try to get a no loss, 7 game Ascension where [Final Score – (350 ∗ Ascension level)] is greater than 1600 or less than 750. Or get a 3 loss game with greater than 1800. (For Ascension > 4)

My bests are 1700 for 0 loss, 1820 on a 2 loss, and 690 and 700 for lowest ascension score. (Without scumming, surprisingly! If you are willing to scum you can definitely beat these!)

Another way to play is to reset ascension level and try to maximize or minimize the first three Ascensions.

With no random stabbing,

Ascension 1 1310 (0 loss max), 910 (0 loss min), and 1530 (3 loss)

Ascension 2 1960 (0 loss max), 1400 (0 loss min), and 2520 (3 loss)

Ascension 3 2750 (0 loss max), 1900 (0 loss min), haven’t done a 3 loss run here

Dreamers are the weakest villager role with the lowest usability in the game, second to knight, maybe.

A truthful Dreamer will tell you an evil’s true identity. If you targeted a villager, the Dreamer will tell you a random evil which is pretty much a waste of them.

If lying, the dreamer will always lie about an evil’s true identity, and tell you a random evil if you picked a villager.

I am on Ascension 130 and have a 100 village saved streak on my main account, which means I’ve played a thousand rounds or more of demon bluff. From that perspective, I will say that dreamers are very rarely useful.

A lot of the time, you mostly want them to identify as truthful or liars, and you can’t do that for sure until you have killed an evil or there is a wretch in play. That makes them a worse sort of confessor.

Sometimes with a certain board configuration, they have a percent chance of validating another character by naming someone as a demon that’s already dead when you know the dreamer is not corrupt.

They are most useful in Lilis games where their ability recharges at night, so you might be able to validate them and then get a use out of them.

If the dreamer is good in a one pooka game, they will always call themselves the pooka no matter if they are lying or corrupt. If a pooka, the dreamer will name an evil that does not exist.

I made a small collection of other “one room” games I liked. https://itch.io/c/6231571/one-room

Late Nine also has “Key Lime Slime” which is technically two rooms but basically a one room game.

So G-Fire-Flip, not G-Flower-Flip. https://rumkin.com/tools/cipher/rot13/

First, get all three stars you can normally get with plain Fire Flip which leaves you with the upper right star. Try not to accidentally fire stuff in the process.

By this point in the game, you have probably figured out there is no way to get to that upper right sector without Rot13(Trggvat ba n jnyy) There is no way to do that with fire or flip. Which leaves you with your other two powers. Rot13(Gung zrnaf lbh arrq gb qb fbzrguvat gubebhtuyl hapbairagvbany gung bayl tbng znxrf cbffvoyr. Nf tbng, lbh pna chfu abgrf, ebpxf, fgnef, naq cbjre beof. Gurer vf n jnl gb znxr guvf jbex, whfg fgneg ehyvat bhg guvatf gung qba’g jbex hagvy jung erznvaf zhfg or gur fbyhgvba, nf penml nf vg znl or.)

The solution takes a quite a few maneuvers to set up, so you might start to feel silly, but it takes less time to set up than G flower flip IMO. Also, you have a lot of options, so long as you don’t shove things into corners or fire by mistake.

The drunk and an evil can both share a disguise as a villager not in play. And hunter #2 is clearly lying because, if they were truthful, all four evils must be in spots #5, #6, and #7, and #8… but drunk is occupying one of those spots, so hunter can’t be telling the truth. Hunter #2 needs to go. Chances are, Hunter #2 is Lilis, which means you can flip the rest of the cards and still win because the health subtraction penalty stops working once Lilis is dead.

Here’s an example of a drunk and demon “double claim”:

https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzI0NzYyMzE0LnBuZw==/original/8Dk%2Fzt.png

Mine was Rot13 (onobbakkkcnqqvaterzbirgurk)

Interesting enough another (cevzngr) related word solved too: (obabobkkkcnqqvaterzbirgurk)

Ascension 100!

My average Ascension Score - (Ascension lvl × 350) was 1032, with a high water mark of 1820 thanks to about 5 Puppet or Lilis rounds in one ascension with meant blind kills were super viable. (Edit: my average score the last 20 rounds was 1163, median 1155, so definitely improved over the course of things!)

Most dangerous card: Dreamer. The number one cause of lost games. Dreamers can’t be used effectively before an evil kill and using them before a kill makes them very tough to validate later. A dreamer on the board is like you don’t have a card at all. Doppel dreamer and Shaman dreamer games are over-represented in my lost game notes. Now that I am this far out perspective-wise, Dreamer is still one the card needs to be fixed to do more so it has pre-first-kill utility, or simply ditched completely. Secondary nod to the plague doctor for being a round wrecker at times.

Most dangerous evil: Chancellor, replacing a villager for an outcast weakens the board more than the puppeteer or corruptors. A nod to Witch and Baa as well.

‘Pooka party’ hands with just Pooka and 4/5 villagers were a delight when they came up - the frequency was about right too. BTW. The knitter should say “There is only 1 Evil” like scout instead of “Evils are not adjacent to each other” in single evil games (taking into account the Wretch).

I confirmed some edge mechanics I had been wondering about: Lilis kills a random evil, not preferentially the wretch, if only evils are facedown on nightfall. (I have screenshot proof). Stabbing a facedown real knight while a witch is blocking does not flip it. Witnesses can point to evils when lying.

I was a little sad game 6/7 of Ascension 66 and game 7/7 of Ascension 77 weren’t something silly (although I did get a seven card seventh game on ascension 77)

A66 6/7 could be a hand with 5 evils and one wretch in play.

A77 7/7 could be a chancellor, shaman, minion game where they all disguise as bombardiers with a real bombardier outcast and shaman dupes a jester and the final char is a judge. #1 Bombardier, #2 Bombardier, #3 Jester, #4 Jester, #5 Bombardier, #6 Bombardier, #7 Judge (Guaranteed winnable!)

The puppet didn’t lie. The puppet was a scout. The Scout’s testimony gives the distance between the specified Evil and the closest other Evil to it. The Scout’s mechanic is different from the hunter who is distance from self to nearest evil.

The scout gave testimony about the witch, who truly was one card away from #9, a demon.

(Caveat that the wretch can mess this calculus up, but not in this round)

Can you post a full screenshot? You seem to have one more evil to kill because…

#1: You do not have “the village is safe” popup yet which means there must be one more evil left to kill.

#2 Your villager count is 5, minus one for the puppet. So you have 4 real villagers. You have 6 apparent villagers on the board that I see, one of which is a doppelganger. That’s one too many unless you have a second outcast.

#9 medium appears to be evil, pointing at #2 who is a doppelganger. In that configuration 7, 8, 3, and 2 would all be telling the truth.

Not challenging, but the Stanley Parable-like joy of circumventing the narrator more than makes up for it. Another birb special!

Alright, exorcists, here’s a weird one for you. Lilis night attacked a real knight twice in a row, so I’ve got a full living 10 card village with a triplet of scouts and a triplet of mediums. Who has to go?

5 is the standard penalty for most villagers and outcasts. That’s almost all the characters.

2 when killing a drunk because the drunk acts like an evil and sometimes you can’t avoid spiking him trying to figure out who is actually evil.

9 for a corrupted knight

6 for a drunk disguised as a knight (special case)

∞ for a real bombardier

And Lilis subtracts 2 health every fourth flip which is why Lilis rounds can look a little weird healthwise.

This is from a run where I got 2 points lower than my max, but it should help.

There are no major errors in the gameplay logic right now (but the lack of tutorials is a problem, imho). People here are happy to sort what’s going on if you screenshot your game results.

The wretch is usually the culprit though for new players, fittingly enough.

Here’s an example of someone else’s problem with the wretch: https://itch.io/post/15061433

Puppet was a slayer, and a puppet slayer can still slay evils. They will slay their puppeteer or themselves. Puppets can also tattle on themselves as fortune teller, jester, bishop, empress, and witness.

The only time the puppet sabotages the ability of the card it is impersonating is puppet alchemist (always “I cured 0 corruptions”), puppet Baker (always “I was a baker” and no propagation), and puppet Knight (can be killed). Puppet confessor will be dizzy.

https://demonbluff.wiki.gg/wiki/Baker

I needed the wiki for the baker.

Basically the baker is a disease that propagates to one unflipped villager card every time a new baker is flipped until it hits a corrupted one. The corrupted one will transform, lie about what it used to be, but end the chain.

So it’s possible for a medium to say something like #7 is a real Knight, and then on flip #7 is a baker that says “I was a Knight” (or if corrupted lie and say “I was an Oracle.”)

“I am the original baker” is always a good, uncorrupted card, but may be a doppel.

Also alchemists who were bakered will still do their alchemy because alchemists are a round start ability, not an on flip ability.

Sometimes when there is a puppet, self-validation is the best strategy.

The only problem with puppet currently is a puppet knight does technically lie by saying “I can’t die.” That should be sneak changed on right click when knight is puppet as a freebie for anyone observant, like cabbage dreamer.

Puppet killing puppeteer ought to unlock a backstabbing-themed skin, imo.

Kinda like Lost in Lampyrid Fog, the puzzles are great and very responsive, the atmosphere is charming, but the platforming is painful and more annoying than fun.

In the upper right, there is a list of the characters that might appear in the round and you can right click to learn how their abilities work. Some like Wretch (always good so never kill, but seen as a truthful but evil minion by truthful characters) can cause unexpected behavior.

The rest is logic.

If you have Poisoner (+1 Corrupted villager adjacent to Evil) and Baa (Don’t know which outcast will be in play), and a choice between Drunk and Wretch for the one outcast and no wretch appears on flip, then you expect 4 total lies - one drunk, one corrupt, and 2 evils. At least two liars have to be adjacent. Then you plot out possible scenarios that would make the board consistent with 4 liars (if X is a lying evil, this guy must also be a liar).

Then you kill someone suspicious (unless you kill a bombardier or you are in a Lilis round, you get a “free” kill) and find out if you logicked wisely. If you were wrong, there’s a good chance you can use the new information (dead cards reveal if they were truthful or corrupt) to pivot into the correct solution, especially if you didn’t tap all the character abilities.

Also you can use dead character abilities, even if they were evil, which helps.

For some reason my saves don’t save for this game anymore, but I will have to give it a try!

I think I just had the best round of demon bluff from a pure logic standpoint. This feels like the purest single game you could play to test if you know the rules.

8 would have been the perfect opening strike because drunk and demon must be double claiming the same role, and 3 and 5 would both have to lie if 4 was evil and only one of them could be poisoned.

There’s no backtracking away from the bear. You can get the solution with the abilities you have, but it’s a bit of a difficulty curve jump straight from yellow rabbit.

If anyone wants my opinion about the "smoothest" route learning mechanics wise, I suggest...

Orange Fox ▶ Yellow Rabbit ▶ Purple Squirrel ▶ Red Bear ▶ Green Deer ▶ Cyan Otter ▶ Blue Owl

My first run, I wound up missing orange fox and going straight to yellow squirrel to red bear to cyan otter. I would not recommend that.

By elimination, yep. The other rabbits at least tried to use their powers, even if they weren’t skilled enough succeed. Beast master is so scared they pretend someone else has their power.

This is a good one! Maybe par of slightly less than architect (but def less than oracle) because of the specificity but it doesn’t combine with any existing character role which keeps the balance.

Maybe the dancer should name one odd and one even Evil if you wanted to increase the potency a bit. (Puppet is Odd, Puppeteer is Even) (No even evils and no odd evils would be pretty helpful if that happened, which might be too OP.)

Here’s that hundred village streak validated on one account. (Sorry it took me while, roadtrip!) I discovered a new nitpick. If you save enough villages, the total number in the all saved villages tab on the left goes too close to the edge for those wide numbers.

So what is fury status, exactly? Does it do the max possible damage for an item? (I see it gets rid of items, but does it do anything else?)

I should have screenshotted to confirm. I don’t recall now.

Great Update! There are punchy gloves now on the apparent character exclusives. Oh no, garbage items! You threw off my Deck duplicator groove! (Still bought two!)

And I finally saw Doc again! I forgot how tricky he is, especially with that one full heal that you have to freeze or lose a universe to.

Is his primal first aid supposed to do anything if his HP is not at 1? He still healed even though I had Exclusion Principal to make sure he didn’t have a 1 universe.