Google I/O '24 Puzzles
io.google
io.google
Had the same "problem" too. I would expect better from an adtech/software firm.
I can also select a piece and hit space and it grows in size and goes outside of its box for some reason? Is that relevant to solving puzzles? Or a bug? I guess I won't find out since I can't rotate pieces to progress further ....
This is the first time I’ve ever seen a page fingerprint me using private mode and tell me about it
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2909367/can-you-determin...
I wonder how do they detect it, maybe there is no LocalStorage on incognito mode, but TBH it should not be visible to a webpage
For those puzzles with the "reverse" tiles that bounce the ball back, I had to turn off my expectations of where the ball is going to go next. In puzzle 5 you send the ball straight out to a reverse tile and my expectation would be for it to just bounce straight back to the entrance tile, but no... it turns left after that. Just a minor complaint. This is just a fun set of puzzles to announce Google IO, not a game I actually spent money on. Also, they control the world of the game and set the rules. Games are all about learning the rules set by the creator which can often defy expectations.
It's much worse than you make it sound; exactly the same tile layout gets you different results in different places.
Maybe I’m just salty that Google got rid of its coding competitions after 20 years. No fun allowed.
The winning move might be to not play, tbh. It was by far my least favorite level.
"THREE.WebGLRenderer: A WebGL context could not be created. Reason: WebGL creation failed: * tryNativeGL (FEATURE_FAILURE_CGL_FBO) * Exhausted GL driver options. (FEATURE_FAILURE_WEBGL_EXHAUSTED_DRIVERS)"
Any tips? Are there magical flags that should be set somewhere?
The later levels are really tough!
I'm willing to deal with some trial and error with stuff like that, as long as it's predictable and cause-and-effect is consistent. What I'm not willing to deal with is what I'm seeing in puzzle seven. I have a crossroads with a U-turn to the north and a curve to the south. The ball enters the crossroads from the east and goes south. If I remove the northern U-turn (which the ball hadn't visited and was therefore useless), the ball now goes north (and into the void) instead of south to safety.
Then you have the obnoxiously loud music that can't be turned off separately from the sound effects (so you either have annoying music or no audio feedback at all), a condescending "keep trying" popup that treats every test as a failed attempt, slow animations that make for an annoyingly slow feedback loop on trying new things...
It's a really cool concept, fun presentation, but execution is all sorts of terrible. You could easily run a game design masterclass centered on fixing this thing.
- You have to use all the tiles.
- The ball must visit every part of every tile.
- The finished layout must look elegant.
Just assume that there is no goal other than closing all the paths. A tile that connects to empty space means you're wrong. A tile that connects to another tile means you're right. Any and all other "rules" will be changed as necessary to ensure that, if a solution is pretty, it's also correct.
* all the tiles are used: yes
* every part of every tile visited: no. bottom right tile is not visited at all; the dangling path of the three-way tile is not visited
* elegant: no. Dangling paths.
Maybe it's a tie-in to their presentation - perhaps they have a new model like Sora which has a poor understanding of physics. (This would explain why the ball starts flat and ends going uphill as well.)
really that makes no sense, physically or in the universe of the game :)
But it’s pretty clear and obvious (to a reasonable person) how the game works and you seem to want to just brag about how you’re clearly a better thinker and smarter than the game designer.
I don't know the game designer especially but what I actually think is that the system (ie org+people) that produced this puzzle is much smarter than I am. I just don't think the puzzle design is appealing and I gave an impersonal argument to that effect. You have a duty on this side to take comments in good faith. If I give you a factual argument about why I dislike a puzzle you don't just get to accuse me that it's really about intellectual girth.
> THREE.WebGLRenderer: Context Lost.
Unfortunate my company already declined my request for Google I/O :(
Well... that's disappointing...
Edit: when clicking 'continue', it does reveal the date: May 14, 2024
But also, in this be situation there isn't much positive to be said about the game. Everything about it is badly done. I'm fairly sure the criticisms (vague and badly communicated rules, clunky UI, graphics style that doesn't fit the puzzle, announcing music without a separate music control, way too many slow animations in the wrong places, browser compatibility issues) would be the same if this was a Show HN.
It's just that none of it is being given as constructive feedback. But even that makes sense: unlike for a Show HN nobody will be applying the feedback to fix the game.
(What I don't get is how this is so high on the frontpage, unless it's just for the schadenfreude.)
Interestingly, this appears to be completely intentional; the 2023 puzzles have the same problems.
Small Google games are often actually really decent, especially in comparison to this, so I think that's where some of the disappointment comes from. The Doodle Champion Island one was my favorite.
Broadly, this criticism applies to nearly all UX.