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>As explained in the post linked above, puzzle games are, in some sense, different from arcade games in that you can never just die.

I didn't finish the post because it went straight into strategy tips before I had even had a chance to play!

Also personally I'm not really interested in arcade mechanics. I'm not interested in global leaderboards or whatever either. Just interested in playing puzzles in my own time on my own terms.

Your thing is very cool! I like the way it is so constrained it's often possible to plan 6-7 moves ahead without much effort.

>but if you've never been into things like blitz chess, it's totally understandable

I'm massively into blitz chess. But this is a puzzle thing, and for me, there is no need for a timer in a solo game.

> Do you mind sharing what device/os/browser you're using, and if you're accessing echochess.com in a fresh browser tab directly?

FF/Android. I didn't understand your second question.

Glad you're enjoying the puzzle exploration. Curious if you've tried levels 11+ btw? Planning 6-7 moves ahead gets trickier later on, especially when you reach the highest levels of 'Classic' mode.

I get your point about solo games vs blitz chess. Puzzle games aside, when I'm playing solo I tend to prefer Turn-Based Strategy games like HOMM, King's Bounty, Civ, Eador, AOW, etc. a little more than RTS games like SC2, Warcraft, AOE, BfME, DOTA, League, and so on. In multiplayer, RTS can be a lot of fun. Of course the best solo campaigns are always real gold, whether timed or not.

The nice thing about good strategy and puzzle games is that they can be enjoyed in different ways by all types of players who appreciate puzzle solving.

Currently stuck on level 10.

Btw it's a bit odd that there are no instructions anywhere on the site? I keep wondering if there's a rule I'm missing or something.

You have these rules in the blog post, but I find the language quite messy and imprecise:

> You are playing White, there is no opponent. You must capture all pieces to win.

> You become the "echo" of any piece you capture. Captured a bishop? Become that bishop.

> You can’t pass through red obstacles. Find the best move order to clear the board.

For starters, "you" is used to describe both the player and the piece. And the last rule contains two different statements, the second of which is redundant from the first rule. It also doesn't mention that there can be more than one white piece, or that white pieces can capture other white pieces.

Maybe something like:

1. The goal is to capture all the black pieces, which never move.

2. Move one white piece each turn, using the basic rules of chess piece movement. You can't move through red obstacles. Pawns don't promote.

3. When you capture a black piece, your white piece turns into the type of piece you just captured.

> I'm playing solo I tend to prefer Turn-Based Strategy games like HOMM, King's Bounty, Civ, Eador, AOW, etc. a little more than RTS games like SC2, Warcraft, AOE, BfME, DOTA, League, and so on. In multiplayer, RTS can be a lot of fun

For some reason, I'm the opposite - I hate RTS against humans.

Nice. That's a good way to rephrase the rules. Only thing to note is this part:

> When you capture a black piece, your white piece turns into the type of piece you just captured.

The echoing mechanism actually applies to any captured piece. You'll see this mechanic in action starting 12+. By "you'll see", I mean the game progression and level design will purposefully force you into following a path which illustrates the new mechanic that needs to be learned. The lack of explicit text instructions, tutorials or handholding in is a feature of echo chess, not a bug. See the 'difficulty curves' section of the post.

> Currently stuck on level 10.

Yes, this is one of those levels that feel incredibly frustrating until it just 'clicks'. In my playtesting experiments, users either smile/laugh audibly when they finally get the solution to level 10, or they let out a big sigh of relief. Let us know how it goes :)

>he lack of explicit text instructions...is a feature of echo chess, not a bug.

Personally, I don't care for it. To me the essence of a puzzle is a clear goal, and a clear set of constraints, within which you try to find a solution. If there are unspecified means available, it's something different, like a "a puzzle with a trick to it". Like one of those lateral thinking problems where it turns out you're meant to fold the paper or something, because they never said you couldn't.

It's easier to enjoy and get deeply into a puzzle when you know for sure it's solvable with the information you have.

>Yes, this is one of those levels that feel incredibly frustrating until it just 'clicks'. In my playtesting experiments, users either smile/laugh audibly when they finally get the solution to level 10, or they let out a big sigh of relief. Let us know how it goes :)

I got it just after posting. I had just missed one of the possible pathways for a knight to get to a certain square. Was going through the process of proving that the puzzle was impossible - often a good way to solve. :)

> I got it just after posting. I had just missed one of the possible pathways for a knight to get to a certain square. Was going through the process of proving that the puzzle was impossible

Nice :) That's the way to do it. I think you'll really like 11+.

Somehow I found 11 easier than 10. But then, it also felt a bit guessier - harder to systematically try each path.

Interesting. I think that's tied to the degrees of freedom linked to bigger boards with fewer obstacles. Coincidentally, the EDA section of the post finds similar indications for the 1,000s of procedurally generated levels segmented by board size and obstacles ratio.

Similar to them, I also noticed some weird issues on iOS where it would sometimes drag the page when moving pieces and, other times, prevent seeing either the top or bottom portion of the UI. I ended up moving to PC for that reason. I also recall not being able to type in a name for the score at the end (on iOS).

One other thing I noticed was that submitting a lower score (at least in endless) still overrides your old one. (My scores went 860.5k -> 314.7k -> 446.9k -> 136.7m, overriding every time.)

Question: when you say iOS, do you mean navigating to echochess.com directly on a new window in a browser like safari? The only time I've seen that weird behavior you're describing is when a webview is being loaded for the game from within some other app. The second part sounds like a bug - thanks for the heads-up!

I'm still not over how you casually dropped that you reached 136.7 MILLION btw. gg.

Both. I don't recall if this is necessary to cause it to start happening, but as soon as you pinch any amount with two fingers for zooming in/out (or to scroll down to see the rest of the cut off UI), the behavior sticks around for a while.

I'm not entirely convinced that this is anything on your end, as I have run into similar issues with my sites, and all the "answers" online don't really fix it. I believe the only real solution is some combination of setting viewport, disabling certain scrolling/finger gestures*, and ensuring that the content on screen doesn't go off the page. I'm no expert though.

*: I don't recall this being absolutely necessary, and it is generally not recommended for accessibility reasons. I believe that I mostly fixed it with just setting the proper viewport meta tag and ensuring content doesn't go off the screen.

Interesting. I'll look into it. Thanks for letting me know and for sharing what worked for you before.

> it allows players who get stumped at a certain level to save their high score to the leaderboard without finishing the game

Have you considered saving the high score after every level automatically?

That approach could work too. There may be a few minor nuances here and there but it's workable. Each level currently does save the running score so far, and resets it to that value when the player restarts the level. It's just not saved as a high score on the overall leaderboard until the player actually ends the game session.

There's a section in the post about the ethos behind the scoring system and how it's designed to incentivize good gameplay while accommodating for speedrunners as a non-primary audience. It also ties in with the part about sawtooth difficulty curves and skipping levels. So some of these considerations can come into play here. In general I tried to reproduce the retro feel of arcade games without taking away from the strategy/puzzle solving kernel.

But yes, definitely. That's a valid approach too.