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 @lisperati for updates.
[1]Well compared to me anyway
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.
But yes, I never thought about rule 2 until I got the dog and one rabbit in place and hadn't won.
farmer, fox, chicken, and grain, and only three of them can fit in the rowboat
foxes eat chickens and chickens eat grain would be a nice type of constraint OP could add to the puzzles
This instance of the puzzle is also easy enough to actually solve this way. Wouldn't work nearly as well with 25 nodes, 5 rabbits and 3 dogs...
Second, is she available for lessons?? :)
Though, sheepishly, I wouldn't have even mustered the energy had I not seen that someone's kid solved it in two minutes.
If I'd had to think about it without interaction... I'd probably never get it.
I do a lot of graphical work, and have to make things fit / function and the only way to do that is hack it, and then clean it up so it looks planned.
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.
I effectively solved the question of "wtf is this?" and the puzzle at the same time.
But after that I really wanted to play again!
I've played kinda similar things before, such as Baba is You.
Yeah I'd love to see more of these. Now I wanna make one myself.
The one issue he had was whenever he'd try to move a rabbit from boat to house, he'd accidentally trigger the browser back function because he was starting too close to the edge of the screen. Then the puzzle would be reset when he navigated back to the page.
This caused a lot of frustration because he could be careful when he was thinking about it, but then he'd get absorbed in the puzzle and forget to swipe carefully.
Now I'm imagining a version where the animals get antsy and start hopping around on their own if you take too long to make a move.
This was a popular thing to do in ye olde commodore 64 days, because you could cycle the background color easily in basic, and nobody thought yet that a video game could trigger epilepsy
(honestly, I'm a bit skeptical about this theory even today, but will defer to the typical opinion on this matter, not being an epilepsy expert)
Suggestions:
- Mark uncrossable paths with (an 'X' in the middle of the line) OR (red) to make it clearer that the path cannot be currently crossed.
- Mark paths with fulfilled conditions (as green OR with the 'X' removed)
- Mark fulfilled conditions with (a tick symbol OR green) and unmet flags with (a cross ('X') OR red) to make the fulfillment state of conditions obvious.
(edits because I can't use emojis in HN comments.)
Perfect illustration of how hard game design is.
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!