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[dobelo9]

Hi Everyone,

I'm delighted to have found this community, and I thank you all in advance for your interest and feedback.

I've developed a puzzle game which is available here:

   [Mobile and Desktops - Browser & PWA app]
   Symzzle.com

   [Android]
   Symzzle on PlayStore
   

Symzzle is a logic puzzle where you fill a grid with puzzle pieces that have a central symmetry. The game indicates the centre of each piece, and using symmetry, size and logic there is only one way to complete the puzzle.

I would greatly appreciate general feedback on the game, and more particularly on the new-player experience.
To make Symzzle as approachable as possible, I included a "How to play" menu and removed unnecessary game mechanics. I adjusted many times the default difficulty to allow first-time players to easily grasp the basic game mechanics without putting off puzzlers who like a bit more of a challenge. I would be grateful for any suggestions on how to further improve the learning curve.

The game is developed for most modern browsers and OS (and I've tested a wide range of them) but please let me know if there are issues on your preferred platform.
I've worked a lot on the controls to ensure as smooth an experience as possible for both touch and mouse. Let me know what improvements you would suggest.

Each grid can be played on 6 difficulty settings: the first 4 levels provide gradually fewer indications of piece sizes, and the last two levels remove the player assists. If you aim for 100% accuracy (no mistakes/erase/undo) then that also increases the puzzle difficulty significantly.

There are 15 daily puzzles in 3 sizes, and another 141 permanent puzzles with even more sizes to choose from. Difficulty  increases with grid size.
Once you're comfortable with the game mechanics, 3-stars is perfect for a quick daily brain exercise. For a robust challenge I recommend 5-stars on the smaller Symzzle grids and 4-stars for the larger ones.

Open challenge: I am not able to solve large Symzzle grids on the 5-star difficulty. I created a time-lapse video of a large puzzle on 4-stars (which took me over an hour and 2 attempts), and I'm very keen to hear from anyone who is at ease with 5-stars on large grids.

This is a passion project. I developed Symzzle in my spare time outside a full-time job. I had stumbled on the original "Galaxy" puzzles at the start of lockdown. I really enjoyed the logic of tiling a grid with symmetrical pieces, but I felt that it could be improved. So, I refined the concept by adding the piece sizes, which allows for new logical solving approaches, which in turn allows for much more interesting puzzle grids than the originals. I first published my puzzles as pdfs and puzzle books (which didn't have much success) before realising that an HTML/CSS/JS app could be ideally suited for this game and within the technical reach of a solo hobbyist project.


I hope you enjoy. Please let me know what you think.

[flowerthief]

I gave it a try. To be honest it's not for me, but the game works well enough. Good job.
An idea: perhaps have an image you're trying to reveal that each square show a little more of. Like one of those old Japanese porn games, haha.

[dobelo9]

Thank you for the honest and supportive feedback. I appreciate you taking the time to try Symzzle.

Your suggestion of using an image as a backdrop which is gradually revealed as the player solves the puzzle, could definitely work well. I’ll reflect on how I could make it happen in a future iteration – with family-friendly images, of course.

[Jerboa]

I played the play store version (v.1.2.5.1-2022.11.28)

I like the concept, I'm not much of a hard core puzzler but the early levels got me used to the game. And it's quite satisfying once you're on a role at the end! Plus there's clearly a lot of user controlled difficulty which I like (36x64 looks terrifying!).

I like the sound design it's informative but not intrusive, the level complete sound is fun.

The tool that appears when clicking on a cell (3-star and below, showing what shapes can cover it), useful, but I didn't see that in the initial tutorial? Could have missed it. There is something like it on page 2 of the tutorial, but it's not clear you can click a blank square and and see it. Picked it up through play quickly though.

I would say for new users an "on-rails walk through" of a difficult level might work, but that can get annoying for people who just want to pick it up by playing.

For the big ones (12x18 +) I got some frame rate issues on physical devices (slow/laggy panning when zoomed), the games isn't frame rate critical but maybe something can be improved here.

My Nexus 5 really struggles past 12x18, but it's ancient. For Samsung S9 and Experia 1, mine struggled after 16x24 and 20x30 resp.

Are you using a grid of Views (XML layout) or Compose? The big ones might just be too much on older devices.

Also on Nexus 5 the launcher icon shows the default android one (It could just be mine, as it works in the emulator) there might be missing mipmaps apps/src/main/res/mipmap-xxxxx/ic_launcher_x.png: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55790124/my-app-icon-is-not-showing-on-some-devices

Icon worked on S9 an Experia 1, just to reassure you!

Good luck!

[dobelo9]

Jerboa,

Thank you for the amazing feedback. Truly appreciated.

I’m delighted you enjoyed the game, and happy to hear that it was easy enough to pick up. Thank you in particular for commenting on the adjustable difficulty and the sound design – very helpful. Regarding the sound in particular I have a different post asking for help to resolve the crackling on some devices (https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=73895.0).

Regarding the “pointer” tool, which shows which pieces can cover a given cell, this is a relatively new feature (1.2.4) and I wasn’t sure how it would be received. As you rightly pointed out, it was inspired by the diagram on page 2 of the Help menu. Now that I’m warming up to the feature and I know it will stay in the game, I’ll design a new Help page for it. But glad to hear that it was sufficiently self-explanatory without the Help.

Having an optional “on-rails walkthrough” tutorial would be ideal, I agree. But here the tech stack will be the limiting factor. The game is fully built with html/JavaScript/CSS, and I don’t think that’s the ideal setup. The Android app is effectively a WebView pointing at the Symzzle.com website. I would probably need to learn Unity (which I’ve considered) and redo everything; but that will be for a v2, once everything is perfected on the original app. I’d welcome any insight here.

And now, framerate… I know it’s a problem, though most notably on older devices. Thank you for taking the time to try it on so many different devices – extremely helpful to understand how size affects various devices. Just yesterday I released an update (1.2.6) which tackled some performance issues. Panning is now much smoother on the larger grids, but the page is still slow to recalculate style and layout on those grids. I’m investigating a few more areas for improvements: simpler CSS classes, a cleaner DOM tree, and avoiding unnecessary changes to the DOM. Hopefully, that will help older devices, and provide a smoother experience for recent devices on the mammoth 54x96 grid which I released yesterday!… Again, any pointers would be appreciated.

Lastly, the icon. Thank you for calling out the issue with the app icon; I wasn’t aware of it. The links that you pointed me towards were easy to follow, and hopefully there will be a brand new icon for the Nexus 5 (and other legacy devices) when the next version of the app comes on the PlayStore.

Again, a big thank you for taking the time to provide such a helpful review.

[dobelo9]

@flowerthief – I have taken your advice: beautiful photos are now revealed as you solve the puzzles. I didn’t quite follow all of your recommendation, but I know everyone will be delighted by the amazing photos I selected online (from pexels.com, unsplash.com, freenaturestock.com, and free-images.com). Thank you!

@jerboa – big thanks again for your review. Since my last post I have significantly improved the performance of the game on large Symzzle grids. And the feature which you found confusing has now been removed. I streamlined the experience for new players by removing a couple assists which were confusing people, and instead created a new “auto-correct” feature on the easier difficulties which automatically removes mistakes; this ensures players of all experience can reach the end of the puzzle without getting stuck!

I encourage everyone to try the latest version of Symzzle:

   Symzzle.com

   Symzzle App on Google Play

[Jerboa]

Checked out the latest version (v1.5.4.4-2023.03.05-p). Pictures are a great addition! Also the next Symzzle button as well.

Frame rate seems improved a lot (54x96) ran well on Experia 1, although there were some artifacts.
zooming was a little slower in some cases (gif, Experia 1, 54x96).




S9 was better (e.g at 20x30). Good translating on 36x64 but the zooming at 36x64 is slower.

I'm not so well versed in css/html/js based apps so probably can't help a lot, but your recent improvements seem to have gone well.

It appears that zooming is more intensive than translating the view. My Nexus is still having difficulty, but it is better. My device has been deterioating recently, so I wouldn't worry too much about that one.

[dobelo9]

@Jerboa – thank you so much for your continued feedback on Symzzle. Truly appreciated.

I am delighted you saw marked performance improvements on your devices. I had spent quite a bit of time optimising the functions which were causing the greatest performance impact, and your feedback was essential for that.

Following your latest post, I’ve now reviewed my implementation of the Window.requestAnimationFrame() API which seems to be Javascript standard for smooth animations, and I rolled a new improved version. It’s still not perfect on the largest grid, but the flickering seems to be gone. Let me know how you get on.

I’ve also now rolled out Symzzle on the Microsoft Store: https://www.microsoft.com/p/symzzle/9N7Z2N39N9KG

As a reminder to all, there is also a PlayStore app for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.symzzle.app

And anyone can also enjoy the full experience directly from any modern browser: https://symzzle.com/


Move to Unity?
I’d like some input from the Community about moving to Unity. I am seriously considering starting from scratch in Unity. So, for those who know Unity well or who have made a similar switch previously, could I have your input on whether this will help me achieve the following objectives?

• First, I’m hoping that Unity is well adapted for this type of 2D puzzle, and will not have any performance issues, and may even sort out the performance issues noted above. Let me know if I’m mistaken, or if maybe there’s a Game Dev platform more suited to porting Symzzle.
• The current version of Symzzle runs very well in recent browsers, on any device, without having to install anything. I’m not too sure how well Unity>WebGL will work on various devices. If I host the game on my own servers can it work as seamlessly as it currently does?
• I have quite a few ideas for new features and variations of gameplay, and I expect it would be significantly easier to make agile changes in Unity. Given that I’m currently handling every aspect of the game backend in JS without any Development Platform or Framework, any change is complex. Again, any insight would be appreciated.
• I’d like to get an AppStore version of the game, and I think it may be easier using Unity (or any Game Development Platform) since rolling out WebViews on the AppStore is fairly complex. Is that right? Is an IOS computer even needed to create and rollout a game on the AppStore with Unity?
• In terms of distribution, I feel like using Unity will easily open the door to the various game distribution stores/platforms on mobile, PC, and web.

Overall, all the above feels like it’s an easy decision to start again in Unity. But please let me know if I should consider a different alternative.
Also, kindly let me know if there is a good tutorial to start my Unity journey.

Thanks all!