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[hcs]

Needs a name, at least, currently a pretty bare bones drag n drop interface, aimed at phones but will work with a mouse.

Don't want to spoil anything, figuring out one major mechanic is intended to be part of the point, though many early playtesters had trouble getting there.

https://gashlin.net/tests/rules/7/

Please let me know how it goes. Give it at least a few minutes if you get stuck somewhere, there are a few points of sharp difficulty/concept spikes that are intended.

Thanks in advance!

edit: update to version 6 to scale correctly on the Wii U browser
edit2: update link to version 7, with a hopefully more intuitive visual representation

[Thaumaturge]

It was an interesting little game. It did take me a short while to make some of the leaps required, but they were interesting discoveries once I did.

I will say that I started to lose interest eventually, but that may well be only a matter of personal taste.

(I would like to have an indicator of how far one is through the game, I do think.)

[Quicksand-S]

I liked this a lot. My main "issue" was that the order of the puzzles seemed a bit off. Puzzle #5 was much more straightforward than #4, for example. There were also just weird things with the way input was handled. Sometimes I could only swap the first letter. Sometimes it seemed like I had to pick up a letter from beside the one I wanted to combine with or it wouldn't work. Sometimes, the equation wouldn't let me combine things unless it was in a certain order (ex. With A+#=A or #+A=A, only the second worked).

Puzzle #8 was probably my least favourite (just tedious repetition), while #4 was my first "Oh, cool" one. Some of the levels in the last third felt a little bit too simple, but I liked how the last couple changed things up. Overall, I like the main mechanic and really enjoyed the game.

[hcs]

Thanks guys!

The order-dependent behavior is intentional, it really only starts to matter in the late levels but it is present all along. I had hoped that by making it explicit in the first level it would suggest that it is not the case later, but with so many like X+X=Y where the order really doesn't matter (as they're identical) I can see how this point gets lost. It also doesn't help that + is commutative as arithmetic addition, and the order (fixed + dropped) can be counterintuitive.

Maybe to fix this the first level should only have one rule, so you have to drag A to B in both cases even though that's going to be in opposite directions. I think I'll make that change in v7.

edit:
Oh, duh, I should use an arrow, like A -> B = C (with the order reversed), that's much more like "A goes to B gives C"

edit2:
I'm going with the name "Various Rules" for now.

[a-k-]

Played it a few days ago. I didn't find it challenging except the last level which I just brute-forced and then retried in order to understand what I did. And then, just when it became interesting, the game ended...

[Alec S.]

The idea is clever.

I would make the goal text larger.  When I first opened up the game, it took me a little while before I noticed that.  Possibly start each new level with the goal taking up the whole screen, like a level title, then moving/scaling to it's position over the board.

Figure you haven't done this because the game is still an early prototype, but some more feedback effects wouldn't hurt: having circles react to you mousing over them, having an effect when you combine two circles, stuff like that.

[danovo]

Very interesting idea! Also checked your other games, very neat stuff. Lots of unique mechanics.

A simple way to add depth could be adding vertical rules (although that could add some rule collision) and the ability stack letters (for example, 'AA' dropped on 'B' on a board that contained 'A->B=C' and 'A->C=D' would result in D)