Friday, May 31, 2013

Rants and WIP

Lately I've slightly reduced the frequency of my reviews, for a couple of reasons.

The main one is that, sadly, the past few weeks on the App Store have been less than memorable for puzzle games. There's a deluge of Rush Hour copycats, and an annoying amount of apps that try to have titles and icons similar to the apparently very popular Candy Crush Saga, but I could find very few puzzle games of any interest.

A couple of games had pretty good puzzle mechanics. Too good, apparently, to be original. Indeed, I recognised Raf Peeters' style in one of them, and sure enough, after some quick research I found it to be a blatant copy of Hide & Seek Safari.
I had already published a positive review of another game, when Tom Cutrofello told me it was a clone of Lunar Lockout. That's not necessarily a bad thing per se, but certainly the origin of the puzzle should have been acknowledge by the author of the app.


The other reason for the less frequent reviews is that, after the release of Brain Twirler, I've been working on the design of my next game.

My initial plan was to make a new version of Twin Beams, featuring a new interface and a new pack of easier puzzles. However, after pondering over it, I came to the conclusion that it was better to do something different, though still based on similar rules. The main reasons for this are:
  • Star Battle, which is the puzzle underlying Twin Beams, is probably the best pen-and-paper puzzle I've ever played. Twin Beams makes it even more enjoyable by automatically taking care of trivial exclusions, but it remains a puzzle of sequential placement: it isn't as interactive as a smartphone allows.
  • Playing Twin Beams at the harder difficulty levels, the deductions needed to proceed by pure logic are sometimes very difficult. It is often quicker to solve the puzzles by occasionally making guesses and tracing back with the undo function if necessary. While using logic alone is the method of choice for purists, a lot of people just want to have fun and solve the puzzles.
  • The rules of Twin Beams aren't complicated, but they are difficult to explain clearly to a novice, and even the easy puzzles are too hard for many people. While I want to make nontrivial games, I'd also like as many people as possible to enjoy playing them.
So I had two essential goals: make Twin Beams easier, and more interactive.

To make it easier, the obvious choice was using the Star Battle rules with 1 star per row/column/area instead of 2.
To make it more interactive, I borrowed Lazor's fundamental idea of placing all markers on the board from the start and letting the user move them around, instead of starting with an empty board and adding markers to it.

Regarding the interactivity, the initial idea I had was to start with a marker in every area, and only allow it to be moved inside that area. So to solve the puzzle the player would only need to ensure that the other rules were satisfied (1 marker per row and column, and no markers next to each other). I prototyped this, but I didn't think it worked well. I then had a different idea to limit the player's movements without limiting them, but I'll talk about it another time.

While testing, I also noticed that the rule of not having markers next to each other was partially redundant: since there must be only 1 marker per row and column anyway, they could be adjacent only diagonally. Was it necessary to leave this rule? I decided it wasn't, so with the goal of making the game as simple as possible, I dropped it. Essentially, this turned the puzzles into a variant of the Rooks problem, with the additonal costraint of having only one rook in each area.

If you are curious. this is what the current prototype looks like. As an exercise, you can also try solving the puzzle :-)
Next time I'll talk about how I'm selecting the puzzles to be included in the game, which turned out to be a lot more difficult than I expected. In the meantime, if you have questions or suggestions, don't be shy and leave a comment!


©2013 Nicola Salmoria. Unauthorized use and/or duplication without express and written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicola Salmoria and nontrivialgames.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Monday, May 27, 2013

Brain Twirler among the 50 best Italian games for iPhone

Today I was gladly surprised to discover that the editors of the iPhoneItalia website have selected Brain Twirler among the 50 games that will be voted by readers to choose the best Italian game of the year, for an event to be held on July 28th, 2013, at the Aquafan Riccione water park.


©2013 Nicola Salmoria. Unauthorized use and/or duplication without express and written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicola Salmoria and nontrivialgames.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Review: Qvoid for iPhone and iPad

Qvoid is a wonderfully presented puzzle game by +Raimon Zamora. The care and polish that has been put into it is unbelievable.

It was originally released in 2011, but has been updated several times and has now become free.
You control a smiling cube. The cube rolls over the playing area, beautifully animated, and when it ends over a colored tile, it picks up that color on one of its faces. Interestingly, after you've picked up a color, your moves are limited because the colored face can only touch a tile of the same color. When that happens, both colors disappear. Match all tiles, and the puzzle is solved.
You can pick up more than one color at a time, which will limit your movements even more. There's even an achievement to be earned if you can solve a puzzle picking up 6 colors at once.

Puzzles that use a rolling solid for their mechanics often tend to have large levels which take too long to solve, simply because they are large, not because they are difficult.
Qvoid doesn't make that mistake: the puzzles are small, but this doesn't make them trivial; on the contrary, the small space and the limiting game mechanics mean that you always have to use your head, especially if you try to solve them in the optimal number of moves.
If you make a mistake there's support for multiple undo, though not for redo. The undo animation is very well done, showing noise bars like a rewinding videotape (do young players of today still know what that was?).

As the puzzles progress, the game adds many additional elements to the base mechanics.
In some levels, you have to mix colors. For example, pick up yellow and blue on the same face to make it green.
An interesting addition is tiles with a number of them. Those need to be matched multiple times, and you can't pick them up while there's a number on them.
Another element which significantly influences the mechanics is bridges; those tiles that can only be passed on once, and then disappear.
Teleports introduce another major change to the gameplay. Not only they move you from one place to another, but you must step on them with a face of the same color, which complicates things even more.
Rotating tiles will turn the cube by 90 degrees every time you step on them.
Moving tiles take you across gaps (they only move when you step on them; there's no arcade action involved).
There's a total of 184 puzzles, split into 8 groups. Most groups get unlocked as you earn enough stars, except for the Bonus II group which seems to be unlockable only though an in-app purchase.
Two of the groups are called Intro I and Intro II, because they were originally included in Qvoid Intro, which is no longer available on the App Store.
Inside a group, you are encouraged to play puzzles in sequence, but if you get stuck on a puzzle there's the option to skip it and unlock the next one (for free). Or, you can use a single in-app purchase and just unlock everything.

What more can I say? This is one of the best thought out puzzle games I've ever seen. It is thoroughly enjoyable, fun both for casual playing and for deep thinking, and has a marvellous presentation. Last but not least, it has unbeatable value for money, since it's currently free. There are no excuses to not download it immediately.

Summary

Nontrivialness★★★★☆
Logical Reasoning★★★★☆
User Interface★★★★☆
Presentation★★★★★
Loading Time★★★★★
Saves Partial Progress
Status Bar

©2013 Nicola Salmoria. Unauthorized use and/or duplication without express and written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicola Salmoria and nontrivialgames.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Review: Takuzu for iPhone and iPad

Takuzu is a fake Japanese sounding name for a puzzle that has often been described as "binary Sudoku" (even if it's quite different from Sudoku). Indeed, it is also known as Binairo, or simply as Binary Puzzle.



It is played on a square grid of variable size; the iPhone version supports from 4x4 to 8x8, while the iPad version from 6x6 to 12x12.
The rules are:
1) Each row and column must contain the same number of 0s and 1s
2) There can be no more than two consecutive 0s or 1s.
3) There cannot be two identical rows or columns.

Rule 3) is not intuitive and is often unnecessary.

I didn't find the puzzles particularly enjoyable. The easiest ones felt like mechanical applications of the basic tips, which are trivial corollaries of the rules. In the harder ones, I got often stuck with no apparent way to proceed through logic deductions, the only way forward being to make a guess.

Of course I might have missed something, however it doesn't look like this puzzle has enough depth to provide lasting appeal.

The game generates the puzzles randomly; when you want to add a new one to the list, you select the size and difficulty (from 3 levels). Puzzles in progress are diligently stored and you can go back to them at any time.
I don't like the random generation. In this kind of games, random generation usually doesn't provide enjoyable puzzles; a careful selection process is needed to pick only the interesting puzzles.

The first 50 puzzles are free, so give this one a try if you think the mechanics are interesting.


Summary

Nontrivialness★★★☆☆
Logical Reasoning★★★☆☆
User Interface★★★☆☆
Presentation★★☆☆☆
Loading Time★★★☆☆
Saves Partial Progress
Status Bar

©2013 Nicola Salmoria. Unauthorized use and/or duplication without express and written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicola Salmoria and nontrivialgames.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Update: Puzzle Retreat 1.9

The good Puzzle Retreat was updated recently, adding a new tile: the bonsai tree. They start as small plants, like these
and when and ice block lands on them, they grow to large trees, which cannot be crossed by ice blocks.
But the most interesting thing about this update is that the old puzzle packs have been rearranged and, as a result of this, all packs (except for the new "Garden") were unlocked for free.

So it looks like there are plenty of reasons to update to the latest version :-)


©2013 Nicola Salmoria. Unauthorized use and/or duplication without express and written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicola Salmoria and nontrivialgames.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Review: Cubo di Coppo for iPhone and iPad

Cubo di Coppo is Italian for "Coppo's Cube"; Eugenio Coppo being the name of the Italian architect who invented it (as an aside, I like his sculptures too).

The game resembles Sudoku, but is played on three faces of a cube.
The rules are a bit more complicated than Sudoku, and are difficult to explain briefly with words, so let me use the game's built-in instructions (click the images to enlarge them):
The iPhone's screen is a bit too small to play the game comfortably, and it's difficult to tap the cell you want to select. This could probably be improved with the addition of zoom support. In the meantime, an iPad is recommended.

Due to the higher number of cells and values, these puzzles are harder to solve than Sudoku; not necessarily because they require more complex reasoning, but simply because it is more difficult to visually scan the playing area. I found them tiring more than enjoyable; but bear in mind that I can't stand Sudoku anymore, so I'm a bit negatively biased..

If you still like Sudoku, you might enjoy this game. If you want to give the puzzles a try before buying it, there are a few printable samples on the official site.


Summary

Nontrivialness★★★★☆
Logical Reasoning★★★★★
User Interface★★★☆☆
Presentation★★★★☆
Loading Time★★★★★
Saves Partial Progress
Status Bar

©2013 Nicola Salmoria. Unauthorized use and/or duplication without express and written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicola Salmoria and nontrivialgames.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Review: Conceptis Slitherlink for iPhone and iPad

Conceptis Slitherlink is the latest in a series of puzzle apps for iPhone and iPad developed by Conceptis, a company which specialises in classic style, pen-and-paper logic puzzles.
I've written in the past that Slitherlink is one of my favorite puzzles, so I've played many implementations of it. Some versions are good, most notably the one in Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection which features many interesting variants.

All the ones I tried so far, however, lacked a feature which I consider critical in the transition from pen and paper to touch screen. I'm happy to say that Conceptis' version has that feature. It is actually disabled by default, but after enabling it in the options screen, here is what you see when you start a puzzle:
See? The edges around the 0 have been automatically crossed out. The game will automatically cross out all edges that cannot contain the path according to the game rules. At long last! Isn't this what computers are supposed to be useful for? Taking care of boring, mechanical tasks and letting us focus on creative thinking. This makes solving the puzzles a lot quicker and enjoyable.
The game comes with three packs available for free from the start, plus additional packs purchasable through (not necessarily cheap) in-app purchases.
Progress and best times are diligently saved for all puzzles.

The iPad allows playing some exclusive, larger grids. iPhone still has some decently large grids:
They are a bit difficult to play at this size, but thankfully they can be zoomed in using the pinch gesture. In zoomed mode the resolution is poor and you can see the pixels in the image, but playing is a lot easier.
Zooming works well with Slitherlink because much of the solving process is local, and you don't need to see the whole grid at all times.

Another distinctive feature of Conceptis Slitherlink is a very comprehensive guide on solving techniques, which covers some pretty advanced topics and is worth a read.
It's nice to see that this classic Nikoli puzzle has finally been done the way it should. Everyone that likes Slitherlink should definitely get this app, and make sure to turn the Auto complete option on.


Summary

Nontrivialness★★★☆☆
Logical Reasoning★★★★★
User Interface★★★★☆
Presentation★★★☆☆
Loading Time★★★★★
Saves Partial Progress
Status Bar

©2013 Nicola Salmoria. Unauthorized use and/or duplication without express and written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicola Salmoria and nontrivialgames.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Review: Solitaire Chess for iPhone and iPad

Solitaire Chess (also free) is the iPhone port of an excellent board puzzle made by ThinkFun. It was invented by Vesa Timonen, a finnish engineer who created many ingenious mechanical puzzles.
Tilt is another puzzle in the same line, which I think would work great on iPhone. Hopefully someday it will be ported.
The basic idea is deceptively simple: put some traditional chess pieces on a 4x4 board, then use the normal chess rules to move one piece at a time. But here's the catch: for every move you make, you have to capture one piece. When only one piece remains, you have solved the puzzle.
The above puzzle is easy enough, but things get trickier pretty soon.
You can use logic to rule out possibilities; also, it helps if you can figure out which piece should make the last move and reason backwards.
For example in the above puzzle it's clear that if you moved the Knight at the top right, it would have nowhere to go and it could not be captured. So it must stay in its place and can only be captured by a Rook; it isn't hard to figure out what to do before then.
Note that the solution to this puzzle is not unique; this is a common occurrence in this game, however the last piece remaining and its position at the end of the puzzle are always unique.

Here is how the difficult puzzles look like. Having more pieces on the board makes it a lot harder to find the correct sequence of moves. With these longer move sequences, the undo button can be useful, though figuring out which piece to move first is probably the hardest part.
This game is a bit old (it was released at the beginning of 2011) and it shows, because it doesn't support the Retina resolution.

The free version contains 40 puzzles, the pay version 400. The puzzles are excellent, but I think that by today's App Store standards, the pay version is a bit overpriced. Still, in objective terms, it's (much) less than 1 cent per puzzle. Try the free version first to be sure.

Summary

Nontrivialness★★★★★
Logical Reasoning★★★★☆
User Interface★★★☆☆
Presentation★★★☆☆
Loading Time★★★★★
Saves Partial Progress
Status Bar

©2013 Nicola Salmoria. Unauthorized use and/or duplication without express and written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicola Salmoria and nontrivialgames.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.