Show HN: I made a puzzle game with Three.js

the levels are short enough that starting over on failure seems reasonable to me. many games work like that. counting the moves also came to mind right away. also many games do that. if the game didn't count my moves i would have wanted to do it myself.

i like that there is no time pressure. i can analyze the board and think before i move. in comparison your first game is frustrating. it makes sense of course, but it's way to fast for me, and not relaxing. this is a relaxing puzzle.

i would change the mechanic of the red squares. as it is they work just like no squares. as falling down kills you too. how about it kills you if you touch a red square and a white (or green) square together, or a red square and empty space? that means you could use a red square only if the block is safely placed over it.

then you could introduce multiple colors that do different things. say, yellow shifts your block by one square. blue rotates it, purple makes it jump to a another purple block, another doubles one or all dimensions of the block, making it faster to move or able to cross larger gaps, one color could add or remove squares, changing the layout of the board, or move the target. etc...

since your goal is to learn 3d, each of these could have a different kind of 3d effect.

(btw: i made it in 303 moves)

I was wracking my brain trying to place where I'd seen this before — thanks!

That was fun! I got it in 327 moves. I think the game would be epic if there was a mechanism to have multiple levels (floors/layers) and require the piece to go up and down in order to find the right configuration.... but that increases the scope significantly.

What's your strategy for designing levels? Is it all manual?

For the desktop just place an isometric upside-down-T-arrow-cluster next to the puzzle so you always see which way the arrow keys point towards. And maybe highlight them when pressed.

No, didn't try it after that, have you?