What I really liked about this game was the lack of instructions. It's like you get two games in one - figuring out how to play and then figuring out how to win.
Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle
301–310 of 485 posts
Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found this particular puzzle pretty easy, but I have a lot of experience with puzzles (recently because my kid likes them). If you want to train novices up to solve very difficult puzzles of this style (or whatever style), start with very simple puzzles and build your way up in a sequence of steadily increasing difficulty, introducing only about one new trick at a time.
I'm curious, are there any particular tricks you used for this puzzle? I basically just used reasoning and trial and error, but wonder what methods may have helped me solve it quicker.
It’s helpful to me to “chunk” puzzles into specific sub-objectives. I split this one conceptually into a “top area” (house, bone, boat) and a “bottom area” (tree, flower, well, carrot).
The tricky part of this puzzle is getting the rabbits down from house to tree. In order to move anyone from the top area to bottom area, you need to have someone in the bottom area shuffling back and forth, and also someone else in the top area.
Specifically, you need to get one rabbit to the bone (dog must be at carrot) then move the dog back to the flower so the other rabbit can go down to the tree. Once one rabbit is in the bottom area the dog can move to the top area to help get the other rabbit down.
Took me about 2 minutes to figure out what to do, and then another few minutes of dragging stuff around to execute. But again, I have been doing a lot of puzzles with my kid recently, so this kind of thing is top of mind.
Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle
#303This is fun. A minor issue: It would be nice if nodes could be skipped. E.g. initially, the dog is on the tree and can move to the carrot in two steps. It is required to make both steps and drop the dog on the well. I would prefer if I could put the dog directly on the carrot, or if I could put the dog on the carrot after hovering the dog over the well.
I like having to drop the dog, it makes it easier to figure out the rules initially without instruction. Also it forces more explicit play, rather than just checking where you're allowed to drop the dog. Obviously it's not very hard to figure out, but I'm imagining kids might end up playing this--having them drop the dog makes sure they understand the solution.
Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle
#304(author here) Great feedback! Yes, I am the "Land of Lisp" guy Sorry about the potential epilepsy trigger- that was the fastest way I could think of to code a quick "reward effect", I will do something different in the next version. I didn't really expect anyone to care enough to solve the puzzle lol. Now that I know people like the puzzle, I will build out the website and post regular puzzles, follow my Twitter @lis…
I thought there was no solution because I thought the arrow pointing on the line from the flower meant you could only go that direction from the flower, but the solution relies on someone behind able to move backwards from the flower. Granted there is the blue feedback if you are on the flower, but it’s confusing when you are trying to plan ahead. edit: Fun puzzle though!
Oh. I solved it by following the arrows, didn’t know I could go the other way.
Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle
#305interesting game
Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle
#306I'd love to see a "this is how many moves it took you" score when you win.
Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you.. As fun as it was to solve the simple puzzle, nothing will replace the joy I felt when I showed it to my 8 year old daughter to see her solve it in 2 minutes flat with no instruction at all. Thank you for making it possible. I had to ask her to persist for a bit as she didn't exactly see what had to be done. She knew what had to be done once she accidentally swiped and saw to rabbit get dragged along. May…
She's a genius[1]. Took me an age to figure out what the rules were and then a fair while to actually get it done. [1]Well compared to me anyway
I inferred rules that turned out not to be true:
1) I thought that, obviously, rabbits and dogs couldn't occupy the same space, lest the dog attack the rabbit, causing a lose-condition
2) I assumed that only one animal could occupy a node.
The game, until the last move, is winnable with those extra rules.
Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. That’s what I played it on. Javascript disabled?
No, just stock Mobile Safari with a DNS ad-blocker. Nothing exotic.
So I finally pulled it up on my laptop, what's particularly weird about that is that all the resources when loading the page seem to be from the site, same domain. It's not pulling in resources from another domain that may be getting blocked.
Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle
#309(author here) Great feedback! Yes, I am the "Land of Lisp" guy Sorry about the potential epilepsy trigger- that was the fastest way I could think of to code a quick "reward effect", I will do something different in the next version. I didn't really expect anyone to care enough to solve the puzzle lol. Now that I know people like the puzzle, I will build out the website and post regular puzzles, follow my Twitter @lis…
Thank you.. As fun as it was to solve the simple puzzle, nothing will replace the joy I felt when I showed it to my 8 year old daughter to see her solve it in 2 minutes flat with no instruction at all. Thank you for making it possible. I had to ask her to persist for a bit as she didn't exactly see what had to be done. She knew what had to be done once she accidentally swiped and saw to rabbit get dragged along. May…
My 9 year old got it in about 3 minutes, but only after I told him to slow down and read everything on the page.
He started with furious swiping right off the bat. I started by reading everything and thinking through moves in my head without even trying to swipe.
I think we ended up solving it in about the same amount of time. Interesting that the rapid iteration method and the measured thoughtful method yielded similar results.
Re: Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle
#310This is a fun puzzle! Great job.
It took me a minute to figure out the rules, but I was able to with some experimentation. I think the lack of explicit instructions adds to the charm.
There’s lots of other elements you could add to these puzzles to spice them up, eg, wolves that try to eat the rabbits, or streets which are blocked at a certain frequency by cars.
Some feedback: - needs a reset button! And maybe a sad-rabbit ‘you failed’ notification if you get stuck. - it already looks good, some cute animations would go a long way if you decide to work on the presentation - you could make it a little more obvious what moves are available when you pick up a dog/rabbit, the shift from white to blue didn’t always ‘grab’ my eye and sometimes I didn’t notice a move was available. Again, a simple animation would help - overall I like the minimalism though, so I don’t think you need to go overboard with visual improvements :)