Author Topic: Celestial cave - my third puzzle. Feedback welcome  (Read 8703 times)

Offline Ixiohm

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Celestial cave - my third puzzle. Feedback welcome
« on: April 28, 2010, 04:38:18 am »
In this puzzle I have played around with some of the new elements introduced in .404 and .405. The puzzle may be a bit tricky in some places, but is otherwise quite straight forward.

Offline Fiskbit

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Re: Celestial cave - my third puzzle. Feedback welcome
« Reply #1 on: April 28, 2010, 08:31:22 am »
Interesting puzzle. I managed to solve it on my first try in 14 moves and 4710 points. I haven't tried to optimize that, but I'm sure it could be done. Regarding the magnets, I used all 3 attractors and one repulsor.

This puzzle makes me feel a little better about magnet blocks. I've spent quite a while over the last few nights trying to get a level working with magnets and I really am not liking them in practice, enough so that I've recommended they be changed from their current form, which is difficult to predict and use (it causes click-and-hope gameplay, which is something I really want to avoid in this game). What they'll turn into, I don't know, but I think it's unlikely they'll stay. Try playing a normal game with attractors or repulsors (repulsors, especially) and you'll quickly figure out what I mean. :P

Anyway, not sure what'll happen with magnets, but your puzzle was certainly interesting. I'm curious: is there a reason you used walls instead of solid wall special blocks? The transparent walls continue to be included in order to allow the board to be shaped in interesting ways, but they can be very difficult to see, so they shouldn't be used inside the board itself because it can confuse players about what is and isn't a wall. Having solid walls inside the board is what the new solid wall special block is for. I'm hoping players will use the wall blocks to make things more clear. :)

Thanks for posting this!
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Offline Ixiohm

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Re: Celestial cave - my third puzzle. Feedback welcome
« Reply #2 on: April 28, 2010, 10:47:00 am »
Thanks for the kind feedback  :)

Yes you’re right it can be optimized further ;) My own solution to the puzzle is in 8 moves and 9170 points, using 3 attractors.

I like the thought behind the magnets, and would not like to see them removed without being replaced by something similar. It's true that the drawback is that they are quite unpredictable. However, the effect of attractors fells much easier to estimate than that of the repulsors. It seems to me that the repulsor is stronger than the attractor, in a similar way to the (anti)gravitational effect being stronger in the featherweight than in graviton mode. In both cases the stronger effect makes them more unpredictable. Maybe you could make a circle appear when mousing over the magnet indicating the range of its influence? This would probably help in estimating how the stream will be bent.

The main reason why I used the transparent walls in the middle of the board was that I started with the design of this puzzle before .405 was released and then the old walls just tagged along. Another reason was that I wanted a different look on the walls in the middle of the board than that of the other wall segments. However, I agree that the new walls are much more distinct visually. Maybe you could let the designed choose the color of the walls too? ;)

Offline x4000

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Re: Celestial cave - my third puzzle. Feedback welcome
« Reply #3 on: August 18, 2010, 10:44:33 am »
Added to the Community Brainteasers for official version 1.005!  Thanks so much for the submission!
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