next »

[Bearded Whale]

I firmly believe that a puzzle game can be made madly diffifult without growing all complex and convoluted, so I have made a game and done everything humanly possible to keep the complexity at a bare minimum. The levels all are small and simple, the solutions are not intricate, just hard to figure out, and every puzzle looks really easy at first glance.

If you are interested in puzzle game design, you might enjoy reading more here:
http://www.beardedwhale.com/codroids/difficult_not_complex

Or if you just want to see it in action, try some really simple but deceptively difficult puzzles in this challenge:

http://beardedwhale.com/challenge

Or begin with some earlier levels (recommended):

http://beardedwhale.com/codroids/try_codroids

[Canned Turkey]

Well designed puzzles, but I think the issue with complexity vs. difficulty is not necessarily contained in puzzle design, but in designing a new puzzle-type. For example, Jonathan Blow's game The Witness took him a considerable time to create a brand new style of puzzles, but even with his effort the structure of how the puzzles were solved required complexity to be added for continued engagement (Making the grids bigger, adding new mechanics), by comparison there was not as much room the expand the difficulty besides involving the scenery and player angle/position within the puzzles.

After a bit of playing with your game, I have to say it turned me away very quickly with the move limit.
Why in the world is there a move limit? Really frustrating mechanic, especially when trying to have fun with a harder level.

[Zorg]

Same here, the move limit is a big nuisance. Just let me solve the puzzle and tell me later that i did not solve it in the best way. Simply put a reset button somewhere i can see it and i'll use it if i feel stuck. Taking away my 'progress' feels like disrepecting my thought process and telling me 'you suck at this game, try again'.

Edit:

[Bearded Whale]

Well designed puzzles, but I think the issue with complexity vs. difficulty is not necessarily contained in puzzle design, but in designing a new puzzle-type. For example, Jonathan Blow's game The Witness took him a considerable time to create a brand new style of puzzles, but even with his effort the structure of how the puzzles were solved required complexity to be added for continued engagement (Making the grids bigger, adding new mechanics), by comparison there was not as much room the expand the difficulty besides involving the scenery and player angle/position within the puzzles.

There are indeed puzzle games where it makes perfect sense to add complexity as the game progresses, and The Witness is certainly such a game.

My point is rather that it often is done without good reason, as if the puzzle designers thought there is no other way.

---

As for the move limit, I absolutely understand why it seems out-of-place. I had no move limit originally (because to me, like you, it seemed just pointless and annoying), but during some alpha-testing I noticed that a lot of players would just move around for ages until they solved it more or less by accident. I actually added the limit by request of these testers, because they felt it was not very satisfying to just stumble upon the solution, but that it was hard to resist playing in that manner.

So while I see your point and would like to agree, after studying and hearing the opinions of many play testers, I'm also pretty certain the game overall would be less enjoyable without the limit.

Actually, during the alpha-testing, I kept movelogs of every tester so that I could study how they solved the puzzles. Almost every move limit is based on these logs, to cut off at the point where people statistically seemed to start just rambling, or to block some particularly uninteresting solutions.

I also noticed that when my play testers had a move limit, they approached the problem in a very different manner. They used a lot more reasoning, and a lot less just searching around. Having no move limit even inflicted on the way they looked for optimal solutions. Having the move limit made them play in a way that not only was closer to my own intentions, but also in a way that they themselves reported as more satisfying.

[Glyph]

Nice puzzles! I didn't have time to play all of the sample levels, but they felt generally pretty enjoyable and finding the perfect solution was fun (though in general I feel like the enjoyment derived from trying for a perfect solution is inversely proportional to the difficulty of a level).

Your philosophy for a puzzle game is spot-on and resonates with the design principles in some of my favorite puzzle games like hana/jelly no puzzle. I do think that you downplayed one aspect that carries a lot of weight too, which is simply the base idea. It dictates the overall number and complexity of puzzle solving principles the player can be expected to learn. I think your specific formula is good but shy of awe-inspiring due to a generally limited freedom that comes along with tandem movement. At any rate, the idea was executed well and I always like to see more puzzles with this philosophy (which is why I made one with the same basic idea in mind, you can check my signature for more info on that).

edit: also the move limit is fine by me, since it seemed pretty generous and a set of moves that exceeded it usually contained inadvertent 'loops' of several moves that returned the puzzle state back to a previous form, so having users consciously avoid such situations is not a bad thing in my mind.

[Bearded Whale]

Thanks, I glad you enjoyed it!

And yeah, I do realize that the base idea of Codroids is a bit too limited to make things as interesting as in Jelly no Puzzle, for instance. The inherent limitations became very apparent to me after a while, and now I look forward to start working on a new game, and choose a slightly less constricted core mechanic. But I have no regrets, I still learned a lot from having to work myself around these limitations to the best of my ability.

edit: Also, regarding the level of enjoyment of searchign for perfect solutions on difficult levels, I haven't mentioned or shown them here, but in the full version of the game I have included several levels that are not so difficult to solve, but require some interesting techniques to optimize. And for the levels that are really hard to solve, the optimal solution is rarely difficult at all to find once you've solved it.

[Zorg]

That's interesting, i never would have expected testers to ask for a move limit.

Personally i'd like to use the board to test out moves visually. If i made a bad move, i could often intuitionally reverse it by swiping into the opposite direction, but the move limit punishes me for this behaviour. So i have to force myself to tap the reverse button instead (or double tap, which is not explained in the game?) which feels unintuitive to me. Sadly, the move animation is not playing backwards. I'd like to have the freedom to simply move around forever and if i found a solution, even by accident, my score would be ruined anyway (high overall moves, low star rating). But maybe i'd get the idea from the last moves how to solve the puzzle in less moves and feel motivated to improve my score. The move limit prevents me from testing/seeing the last moves and learning. Maybe you could add an option to deactivate the move limit? I would really like the game but the move limit annoys me. 

P.S.: Found a typo: PERFECT SOULTION.

[quantumpotato]

This should be in the design forum

[Bearded Whale]

The android version explains that you can undo by double tapping, but the online demo is targeted primarily at desktop players, so it never mentions it.

I think the player must in some sense be "punished" for using a reverse move as an undo, partly because this often does not actually undo the move, but also because it would get quite confusing if the move counter suddendly decreases for a move that you perhaps did not intend as an undo. Avoiding confusion is, of course, particularly important in a game like this.

I have considered letting the lamp row indicate when you revisit a previous state, highlighting those states. You can click on the lamps to undo back to that state. But I personally don't feel that it helps much, and was rather distracting. Perhaps this could be included as an option though. Do you feel that this would help? I think that in many cases when you hit the move limit, you have revisited a previous state at some point.

I quickly threw together a version without a move limit (or rather, you can keep moving after the limit, but your solution does not count as valid), and with revisited states being highlighted. You can try it out here:

http://beardedwhale.com/codroids_test/try_codroids

Thanks for finding that typo, I'll fix that.

[keith.burgun]

A useful distinction here is inherent complexity vs. emergent complexity. If you only look at inherent complexity - the complexity listed by the rules - then yeah, they seem not complex. But if you look at the emergent complexity - the complexity revealed when the rules are acted upon, then they are quite complex. A good example of this is that Go is one of the most complex games ever created, and yet the rules can be explained in under thirty seconds.

[Zorg]

Highlighting revisited states is too distracting/confusing, imo. Clicking the progress lamps only complicates things, too. You are right, decreasing the move counter would not be intuitive, either.

Not ending the level when it is solved after too many moves is not much better than the previous move limit, because it looks like a bug at first glance. I'd suggest to create another low type of 'medal' for finishing the level with too many moves. It could be a boring copper coin, but it shows me i somehow completed the level, very inelegantly. To get the shiny stars i'll have to replay it. That would be motivating for me. Even when i see a gold or silver star instead of the red star in the level overview i want to get rid of it.

By the way, i'm not very good in this game, that's why i'm a good test subject, i guess.
Solved 8 of the 12 demo levels so far (was not able to solve 9 in few minutes and did not try 10 to 12 yet) with a result of 'only' 6 of 8 perfect solutions.