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Really nice concept and super clean execution. Wish I’d had 1/2 this restraint on adding complexity when I made my own tile-based puzzle game[0] [0] https://www.hidden-mirrors.com
i have a strong quibble about calling this XOR. XOR takes two arguments and one of the arguments here is implicit. The game inverts the square colors, which XORing with "1" will do, but it's not defined whether white or black is 1, it just inverts white and black.
Really nice concept and super clean execution. Wish I’d had 1/2 this restraint on adding complexity when I made my own tile-based puzzle game[0] [0] https://www.hidden-mirrors.com
I like your puzzle game. Yeah, it did take me a bit to understand initially. I wonder, do you generate the daily levels automatically?
Took ages to find an algorithm that produces mostly interesting puzzles in the goldilocks difficulty zone.
If you're into retrocomputing, the C64 game Quadromania (1987) has similar gameplay: https://archive.org/details/Quadromania_1987_CP_Verlag_de-en...
It took me a while to get past the instruction screen (I needed to press space, then "E" for english, then press escape) Now I can't seem to figure out the controls for the actual game.
If anyone wants an extra challenge: think, how would you write a solver for this?
Tangentially related, have you heard of Bombe? It's a hexagonal minesweeper where you write rules to solve every possible scenario. It even checks your rules' satisfiability via SMT.
Well done!
Great game, thanks for sharing. Would love to have a daily level.
I was thinking of making weekly levels be very big (like 12x12) where I don't know what the par is myself, and have it be a challenge to see who in the community can figure out a way to get the lowest number of moves.
And daily levels would probably be more similar to the regular levels.
If anyone wants an extra challenge: think, how would you write a solver for this?
(If I'm trying not to spoil anything, do I even post? Maybe I can encourage someone else to have fun giving it more thought.) At least one elegant and efficient answer is within reach for many. The person who first pointed it out to me didn't need to know the relevant branch of mathematics to do so; he intuited the shape of it without the formal terminology. I'll be particularly curious to hear the pattern(s) in how…
Regarding the number of solvable boards. It is actually possible to calculate the exact number. The solvable boards correspond to the image of the matrix of moves. It will be a vector (sub)space over Z/2Z, so it will always be a power of 2, and its size will be determined by the rank of the matrix. For example for 5x5, there are 2^22 valid boards.
And regarding the number of solutions to a given board, (assuming you ignore the order of moves, because it doesn't matter) it will always be the exact same number, and in the case of 5x5 it will be 2^8. 8 is the nullity of the matrix of moves.
Note that 22+8=30, which is 44+33+22+11, which is the number of possible moves.
The game is quite fun. But it seems the difficulty ramp quite late? It's not very difficult to get the answer with least step by solve the side first until about last 20 levels. Also, the game does give you a hint about how to bruteforce the level if you only have one square left. Good job.
ASMR FTW Well done!