Samon: Designing a Zen Garden Raking Puzzle
gwern.net
gwern.net
It’s interesting that Gwern explicitly mentions ZPG as an inferior predecessor, because – for reasons I cannot clearly articulate or explain – I find it much more enjoyable to play than Samon. The player experience feels a lot more polished.
For a while, you could upload your own ZPG garden designs to the Lexaloffle BBS, where they would be playable on the web. I designed a few brutally difficult gardens, which were unsolved for years. Good times.
If you have ideas, you could try vibecoding them and see if they work. The page should be fully self-contained and have everything an agentic LLM could need.
Core mechanic was that you have to achieve a defined end state and the interactions can help you to do so with additional complexity.
ZPG winds up not being as interesting, I think, because it doesn't figure out how to take the core idea of raking and twist it into more interesting puzzles, which is the classic puzzle approach: find a clean core mechanic, and then escalate on it.
You do see how that's all garbage, right? So why not just delete it? Keep the good part, delete the bad part.
The game widget itself takes up 3 pages on mobile, because of all the Claude web design.
... Wait, as I scroll down again in composing this complaint, I realize I'm wrong about there being any human text at all. It's all garbage. This makes me kind of sad for the Gwern we've lost.
FWIW, I do not force anyone to, because the URL I shared on my Twitter/Substack/Reddit has the '#play' hash-anchor to skip to the prototype game, and leave Claude's writeup for those who care. Take it up with OP if you dislike where they pointed the submission to. I provided the necessary standardized metadata for readers to skip to the part they want (clearly hyperlinked at top), the rest is up to them.
> You do see how that's all garbage, right?
I don't, because that's not true. There's a lot of interesting stuff in just the parts you quote as 'garbage'. For example, I was surprised by the exact solver and constraint optimization that Claude chose to do, which led to some of the more interesting features of the puzzle like the hinting feature or the 'par' challenge (and the existence of multiple solutions but some of which are optimal, and challenging you to reach optimal rakes, is one of the things that distinguishes it most from similar puzzles like 'Cardinal Chains' or ZPG). And this is one reason the title is 'Designing a Zen Garden Raking Puzzle', as opposed to just 'A Zen Garden Raking Puzzle', because Claude/Astra took it in some interesting directions compared to my original proposal, due to their coding and algorithmic prowess. Had it just been me, I probably would've gone for a unique-solution approach like everyone else.
> The game widget itself takes up 3 pages on mobile, because of all the Claude web design.
Not sure what you mean. I just opened it up on my Pixel phone and it looks entirely playable on one screen to me. Are you referring to the level table of contents at the bottom or the poems...? Obviously there's no problem with those taking up more than 1 page because you don't need to consult them to play. (Anyway, I'll note for the record I've been tweaking it since the first uploaded version to streamline the UI/UX a bit based on Said Achmiz's feedback, so the latest version may be more to your taste.)
> This makes me kind of sad for the Gwern we've lost.
I'll fetch the smelling salts, but I'm surprised at this reaction to a prototype game implementing an idea I had.
For all I know, perhaps this even was guarded by such a link, but because I got to it through HN, I would have missed the warning.
Just ignore it Gwern.
There is a vocal minority here who like to complain about any output generated by AI as if all writing is some sanctified art form rather than a means of communication.
I love your writings. I also found the AI writeup of the project well structured and easy to read.
Seeing a gwern comment get downvoted is a first for me. An odd sight.
I feel like I might have a unique perspective here. I absolutely hate slop, but I've also experimented a lot this year with AI game dev. I was shocked at the negativity (being told snidely to "learn to code" despite having made games for decades).
This seems like a clash of an extremely AI pilled person coming into contact with the often irrational and overwhelming backlash against AI, which is common even on HN these days.
Slop is only an issue is when it's implied to be handwritten. Because then someone is asking me to waste my time reading something they didn't spend time writing. That's not the case here since you've called out the AI contribution, but I bet a lot of people are skimming over it.
The real problem I see here is that Claude often doesn't have a sense of what's interesting. In the 30,000 word write up, I don't see anything particularly new and interesting about the prototype.
I see: using turns as a score, Hamiltonian paths, and a reference to a "wide rake" and "no u-turns" which either I don't understand or doesn't show up until late into the game. If there is something interesting in there, Claude hasn't convinced me of it!
Where the audience starts getting rightly annoyed is an irreverence to the existing prior art and an overestimation of how unique/interesting this prototype is (presumably fueled by discussions with Claude), particularly these statements:
> I came up with the original idea entirely independently [an idea that is predated by 20 years]
> ZPG winds up not being as interesting, I think
Let me state: you've made something neat! I like the concept, I like the heightmap aesthetic. Fwiw, most of my vibe coding experiments were about digging in sand using voxels.
However, people are hypersensitive to anyone easily impressed by AI output while simultaneously downplaying the value of human creativity.
It’s been around for 30 years—I think it’s got some legs.
The process is intended to be meditative, but this maximalist, AI-designed GUI and the “puzzle” framing both obstruct that.
However, I find that Gwern's stuff in general has gone downhill ever since he has seemingly contracted mild-to-medium AI psychosis. Wish he'd go back to writing.
No surprise there.
That aside, did you enjoy the game?
if you don't like the content, flag it and move on please