I have some end state screenshots in a comment below for no box runs if you want hints. Slide can be tricky and that's what all three of those levels have in common. And for slide 2, falling off into the water at the right point in a spell to complete it from the respawn point and finding places in the level that have the right space to do that in.
Ryftik
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You can reach the orange flower orb of key fire with *zero* uses of key after you pick key up. You should work backwards from that logic: "If a path forces me to use key, then this must not be the way." You also will need to practice your backtracking walk to avoid setting off key by accident at several points.
Hint: Lbh arrq gb hfr sver orsber lbh teno xrl gb pyrne fbzr fcnpr
Ooh, didn't think of that. I thought maybe if I turned twice the ending would be upside down. The tube of light was nice though. Haven't found any secrets. Edit: I did try bee and goat and defog
Edit Edit: I did not try beating the game with just 2000 points and turn for victory to see if you get a low score ending. Imma try, brb.
Edit Edit Edit: 2000 points gets you rank turtle which runs from 0000 to 4999, dolphin starts at 5000.
I normally don't like sokoban, but this one gets the magic right. Except for the insane final level, most levels don't have more than 3 geodes, and the bulk of the puzzle is figuring out the order and direction to split them, so resetting and trying again are fast, lowering the frustration factor. Absolutely fantastic level design.
Completed it all but Pylon X. This is a really solid puzzle game with great progression. The little stories were better than the fluff I expected.
My opinion, this game definitely suffers rather than benefits from being sokobon style in the puzzle sections. Exploring the gardens by grid movement was was fine, but I would have rather dragged and dropped stuff in puzzle zones even if it was on rails with collision. The movement is also choppy in the web app and I found myself undoing a lot. I eventually became resentful the "dead" time that felt wasted shoving stuff around in the harder puzzles just to get to the point of where I could try solutions, especially shard and spire. For spire, I stopped trying solutions in game entirely and mapped using Simon Tatham's black box puzzle app.
Frustration with the sokoban mechanics aside, I enjoyed Shard. That was a new system for me. And the puzzle simply looked good.
Spire was grueling in a math way. Lot of great designs in the mid-late stages. The X ones were an enumeration of all the mathematically possible solutions.
Totem was kind of long but some of the puzzles were just demos, and overall the puzzle design was really well thought out. This one felt like it had the most love put into it. I replayed this one because it was pretty neat.
I am a huge fan of set, so Glyph was a breeze but I really liked the later puzzles in that pack.
Pylon was difficult. I really wish there were show lasers pieces instead of trees at the borders for the later puzzles because the bouncing got really busy with the splits and turns. The cycle of screenshotting, plotting, and then playing unfun sokobon to readjust a piece convinced me the X puzzles weren't going to be worth it.
Don't read these until you try G-fire-flip - https://rumkin.com/tools/cipher/rot13/
Hint 2 for G-Flower-Flip Rot13(Lbhe frpbaq fgne nsgre gur gevivny fgne fubhyq or gur hccre yrsg. Gb nibvq ybat-qvfgnapr fbsgybpx, lbh arrq gb chfu gur bar npprffvoyr abgr vagb gur pragre fdhner svefg guvat. Nagv-sehfgengvba, lbh pna fgnfu vg ol chfuvat vg hc vagb gur “pbyyrpg rirel fgne gb jva” abbx ol gur gevivny fgne naq gura fgrccvat hc ba gur pbyyrpg abgr gb chfu vg qbja yngre jura lbh arrq vg.)
Hint 3 for G-Flower-Flip Rot13(Gur frpbaq ybat-qvfgnapr fbsgybpx vf sybjrevat pregnva fdhnerf va gur ebj nobir gur ubzr ebj orsber lbh frg hc. Vs lbh ner fghpx naq qba’g xabj ubj gb trg fgnegrq jvgu guvf chmmyr, nofbyhgryl SVEZ ehyr xrrc nyy sybjref rdhny gb be orybj gur ubzr ebj hagvy lbh unir “cvpxrq n qverpgvba” – lbh jvyy xabj jung gung zrnaf jura lbh trg gb gung cbvag. Bayl gura jura lbh unir guvf fcrpvsvp bowrpgvir jvyy sybjrevat nobir gur ubzr ebj znxr frafr.)
Hint 4 for G-Flower-Flip Rot13(V pbhyq trg rirel fgne jvgu bayl rvtug gbgny hfrf bs sybjre vs hcevtug be gra vs V jnf vairegrq qhevat n pregnva znarhire.)
Solve G-FIRE-FLIP instead. It is not one of the trophies, yet G-Fire-Flip presents the same conundrum as G-Flower-Flip with the benefit of being harder to softlock and having more possible solution variations. By taking away your ability to destroy scenery with flower and reducing the complexity to obtaining the single star you can't get as human-fire-flip, it puts focus and clarity on the single major problem.
Casual Player New Run Scores
(Edit: I made some improvements, and I replied to this comment with screenshots of each level at each of these scores (or a slightly lesser one) if you need a hint. )
No Boxes, No Secrets | Yes Boxes, No Secrets | Boxes & Secrets | |
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Ice 1 | 1170 | 1282 (2) | 1360 (5F) |
Ice 2 | 1180 | 1410 (11) | 1430 (9TF) |
Lily 1 | 1008 | 1164 (4) | 1240 (7F) |
Lily 2 | 960 | 1244 (8) | 1500 (8TA) |
Move 1 | 1060 | 1260 (3) | 1300 (11T) |
Move 2 | 824 | 1212 (7) | 1760 A |
Size 1 | 952 | 1360 (4) | 1470 (7A) |
Size 2 | 992 | 1216 (3) | 1710 (9TA) |
Slide 1 | 960 | 1340 (7) | 1595 (15T) |
Slide 2 | 512 | 1060 (13) | 1280 (12MT) |
Turtle 1 | 628 | 1204 (4) | 1440 (8M) |
Turtle 2 | 520 | 1022 (10) | 1225 (10F) |
Sum | 10766 (11966) | 14774 (15974) | 17310 (18510) |
Favorite level rankings
(More fav) move 2, slide 2, slide 1, size 2, move 1, lily 1, ice 1, turtle 2, ice 2, lily 2, size 1, turtle 1 (Less fav)
To the developer:
Favorite part of the game was the no box challenge.
"Lily" like "lily pad" is typically spelled without a doubled "L".
General Hints:
I needed 11 boxes to start getting hard bottles, but that's probably my fault for not thinking hard enough (trying goat-note-tech for those in the know). The order I got the hard bottles was slide 2, then move 1, move 2, and slide 1. Unless there is some sort of slide chaining behavior I missed, slide 2 is the gatekeeper bottle.
"B"+home means you have to get all the stars with only "B" in the puzzle garden, without picking up any other spheres other than home. Some people miss that the paper clue is teaching a new step pattern like remove fog. The step pattern is... scroll for spoiler
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←↓→↑↑←↓→→↑←↓↓→↑←
And is you still don't know what to do after you go back the garden and activate "B", try pressing the up key a bunch.
That is the solution to the puzzle. It works. There is no other way to solve it. If you can't get upper left from there, you are probably missing how to chain walk across gates with key. It is the same technique you use on key flower to get to the flower.
You have to open the gate, take a step back to reset the spell, and then use it.
That's what the note in the gate maze telling you to turn back to reset spell progress tries to explain, and why that note is in the gate maze.
You have to get on a wall with key.
If you want to know exactly which key gate it is, big spoilers, so maybe don't read: Rot13( Gur ybjre xrl tngr gung gbhpurf gur sne yrsg jnyy...)
More explanation...
Juvpu yrgf lbh trg hc bagb gur gbc bs gur obhyqre syvc znmr naq gura gur evtug jnyy bs gur sybjre beo nern, naq gura npebff gur abj-snyyra fgnpx bs obhyqref gb gur hccre yrsg.
N ebpx jvyy snyy ba gur bcra fcnpr tngr lbh arrq gb ernpu gur tngr hc va whfg gjb hfrf bs xrl, zrnavat lbh ner nyybjrq bayl n fvatyr xrl gb ernpu gur tngr. Hfvat gung bar xrl jvfryl, fgrccvat pnershyyl, naq svaqvat nygreangr ebhgrf gung qba'g sbepr lbh gb gevttre xrl vf gur tvzzvpx bs gur xrl-sver gebcul.
Which bush exactly? There are a few choices! I posted the step shapes for fire in another comment. The third row is fire upright. You can't get that bush on the leftmost side of the map from the go back to trophy room nook below. You can see no upright fire shape fits.
If you are talking about the bush just upper left of the center star with two blocks sitting on it, you can't pass it. But you have already solved the hardest 2 parts of the puzzle if you have reached that nook before the tower of five blocks comes crashing down behind you. The solution is right there, just not through that bush.
Key fire was probably my favorite trophy overall for where I was in the learning process. It also took me a while, although I got hung up on two different steps.
General Hints: It is way, way easier to attack the trophies when you have a visual reference for the step shapes you can fit in an area. Here are the possible step patterns for flip (purple) and fire (red), regular and inverted. Lighter square is start, and darker square is finish. I also included the chain flip into fire.
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Hint for Key-Flower and other lower left key trophies.
I got stuck getting started on some of these. Rot13(Yrnea ubj gb punva tngr pyvzof ol fgnegvat n jnyx va gur evtug cynpr fb gur xrl npgvingrf zhygvcyr gvzrf jura lbh arrq vg.) To read the hint, please copy and paste into an online Rot13 cipher decoder.
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Hints for G-Flower-Flip. I hit a point in this puzzle where I stopped having fun and would have appreciated a few concrete “You are doing this right/wrong” because there are a lot of things that have to come together just so and it can be a while before you realize you have softlocked.
First hint, in plain text because it doesn't give anything away. If you are stuck on G-Flower-Flip, drop it for a bit and solve G-FIRE-FLIP instead. It is not one of the trophies, yet G-Fire-Flip presents the same conundrum as G-Flower-Flip with the benefit of being harder to softlock and having more possible solution variations. By taking away your ability to destroy scenery with flower and reducing the complexity to obtaining the single star you can't get as human-fire-flip, it puts focus and clarity on the single major problem.
Hint 2 for G-Flower-Flip Rot13(Lbhe frpbaq fgne nsgre gur gevivny fgne fubhyq or gur hccre yrsg. Gb nibvq ybat-qvfgnapr fbsgybpx, lbh arrq gb chfu gur bar npprffvoyr abgr vagb gur pragre fdhner svefg guvat. Nagv-sehfgengvba, lbh pna fgnfu vg ol chfuvat vg hc vagb gur “pbyyrpg rirel fgne gb jva” abbx ol gur gevivny fgne naq gura fgrccvat hc ba gur pbyyrpg abgr gb chfu vg qbja yngre jura lbh arrq vg.)
Hint 3 for G-Flower-Flip Rot13(Gur frpbaq ybat-qvfgnapr fbsgybpx vf sybjrevat pregnva fdhnerf va gur ebj nobir gur ubzr ebj orsber lbh frg hc. Vs lbh ner fghpx naq qba’g xabj ubj gb trg fgnegrq jvgu guvf chmmyr, nofbyhgryl SVEZ ehyr xrrc nyy sybjref rdhny gb be orybj gur ubzr ebj hagvy lbh unir “cvpxrq n qverpgvba” – lbh jvyy xabj jung gung zrnaf jura lbh trg gb gung cbvag. Bayl gura jura lbh unir guvf fcrpvsvp bowrpgvir jvyy sybjrevat nobir gur ubzr ebj znxr frafr.)
Hint 4 for G-Flower-Flip Rot13(V pbhyq trg rirel fgne jvgu bayl rvtug gbgny hfrf bs sybjre vs hcevtug be gra vs V jnf vairegrq qhevat n pregnva znarhire.)
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To the developer, EpicPikaGuy:
Absolutely fantastic puzzle design. The different star directions and open puzzle field allows new players to compartmentalize on regions and bring previous victories forward unlike many "grindy" high-reset block pushers which feel more like chess plotting moves in advance. The only change I would suggest is modifying the trophies to require G-Fire-Flip before G-Flower-Flip. G-Flower-Flip is a major difficulty spike otherwise. See image.