Hmmm, yeah I get ur point. There are many games which I've stopped playing because I wasn't able to complete the previous level.. Oh and there are gonna be more levels.. Awesome.. All the best guys..
Like F-word based on "dick/cock" - in Russian and most of slavic languages. It's the most used word to describe virtually anything: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat_%28Russian_profanity%29 Under "Key words and expressions" by the link above you can see it the first base word - pronounced as "khuy".
To add: What you see below is part of our level design process (though I must confess this looked way more awesome in the original hand-scribbled, whiteboard content that it was) We first designed a set of 50 levels and ran an active beta of it for players. From which we gathered how the presence of different elements would impact the difficulty of the puzzle for players. Then, we went on to define all possible combinations of our elements. Then, filtered out the one's we didn't feel would make for interesting play. The resultant combinations were then divided into three difficulty categories, and we went ahead putting in a count of puzzles that seemed right for that specific combination of elements and difficulty. As you can see, in the image above, we ended up with few simple puzzles, some moderate ones and a lot of difficult ones. The game ended up being, by our calculation, a 2.25/3 (75%) on a weighted average of difficulty. Convincingly, putting it in the midcore-hardcore section of the market. Keep in mind all of this was based on playtest data from about 400 players.
Woohoo, we climbed up to rank 70 on the US iPhone paid games charts Here's to hoping we climb somewhat more. Thanks a lot for the support guys, this game has been a joyride.
Thinking games don't have timers, unless you don't want people to think, or think, then memorize, then rapidly input the moves. C'mon, achieving 3stars in a game that is logic based should not be awarded by time, it should be awarded by number of moves. I want to like the puzzles, but totally turned off by being awarded 1 star just because I want to think out the moves, and so take a few seconds longer. This isn't a twitch runner.
Having watched a video of the game itself, I will have to agree with pluto6 on this one. The time trial requirement appears unnecessary and counters what is inherently a logic name. As the solution for a level is fixed, it is prone to replay attack so that the time trial is meaningless if you can just memorize the moves ahead of them. I also don't see any metric shown at the end (or start) of each level showing you explicitly the move and time goals you need to hit. Is the info hidden somewhere?
The reason we put in the timed scoring there was because the variation of moves between the different solutions of a puzzle was not huge. So it would be very difficult to differentiate between two players simply between the number of moves made. Thus we added the measure of time taken to arrive at that solution as the main star scoring system. I understand the frustration where the puzzle makes you take extra time and then penalises you for it. What we can do, perhaps, is to figure out a scoring system that takes both time and moves in consideration, maybe? Does that sound like a plausible solution? The scenario of replay attack might work for smaller/simpler puzzles. But the more complex ones will still be tricky to solve quickly with a replay attack.
Just above the replay/reset buttons, there is a thin colored bar that goes from gold to silver to bronze. This bar is the marker of the time tier taken to solve the puzzle. Gold = 3 stars Silver = 2 stars Bronze = 1 star. Is it not noticeable?
Questions: 1 What about the moves? I don't see a goal for moves for 3 stars. 2. The timer for some levels may be unfairly stringent. In Sanuku's playthrough, I noticed that Level 9 must be solved in just 2 seconds (5:15 in the video), but there are at least 7 moves (according to the solution Sanuku found) which you need to do. Is that even possible, judging by the speed of the animation? 3. When you reset a level, the timer does not get reset. Why? This means you need to exist the level and enter it again to retry for 3 stars? Is that unnecessarily cumbersome?
Right now, there are no goals for moves. You can make as many moves as you want to solve the puzzles. That specific case is a bug, which we will fix with an update. We are right now going through all the levels again to find other such issues. The way we look at it, reseting a puzzle is the same as going back to the original state of the puzzle, because the road you took to solve it ended in a dead-end. So the time does not reset, because you haven't found a solution yet. The time represents the total time taken to solve a puzzle. Now, like I already mentioned in a previous comment, we made a puzzle game that is, in our opinion, slightly towards the 'difficult' end of the spectrum and so we wanted people to freely move between puzzles. So that they can come back to a puzzle they have got stuck at instead of simply burning out on the game. To that end, when you exit a puzzle and come back to it, the game treats it as a fresh attempt at solving the puzzle and thus the timer is reset. Now this results in a hack: you can exit a puzzle, and come back to it later to try get a better star score. This star score, by the way, is only used in the gamecenter leaderboard and does not affect how you play the puzzles at all. And we think, if you are willing to go through the pain of leaving a puzzle and come back to it repeatedly, just to score better stars, in a way, you deserve the higher score for the effort made (if only for sheer persistence). But the most non-cumbersome and fun way to score higher is to solve the puzzle on your own merit within the given time constraints.
Can you please explain how the Blender works? I don't understand how it selects which color of the two it it will produce. Edit: Is it as simple as it produces the opposite color? Yikes I guess I was overthinking it.
Yes, it simply produces the opposite color. However, a thing to keep in mind is that the Purple huerons always get preference over Green huerons when making a move. So, if you make a move where both the purple ones, and the green ones have a valid move, the purple ones will be moved. If you are unsure of what move will be made, simply touch and hold on the empty tile to see what huerons will merge there.
So I apologize to the developers if this becomes a wall of text. And I also apologize if this is a flight of ideas. First, I think that the idea of having the number of moves as a primary for stars with timers as a secondary if you like for leaderboards. Who cares if there are gaziilions of people who all got the top score for the least number of moves? I guess to encourage competition - maybe there are other ways for people to compete rather than number of moves? So, ultimately time becomes the competition. But, the primary should be did you complete the puzzle in a logical fashion, since this seems to be a logic puzzle. Make the timer optional, or able to turn off, at least to the person solving it - it can always be stored and displayed as data at the end of the puzzle - you solved this puzzle in "x" moves in "xx:xx" time. I look at this like the NYT Crosswords puzzle - yes, they are difficult, and they have leaderboards for who solves them the fastest, and the vast, vast majority of the US are happy if they complete it at all, or even if they get part way done. The timers are for those dedicated few. Now, if you have a hit like the NYT crosswords puzzle, I guess you can do that - but you don't know if its going to be a hit. So, my big points - I have been around this board since June 2009 as noted, and I can tell you ABSOLUTELY that Toucharcade does NOT represent the gaming world out there. I have no idea where Candy Crush is buried in TouchArcade, but it is, and never was (to my recollection) discussed much at TouchArcade. The people that come to these forums, stick around, and make suggestions probably do not represent the typical iOS gamer out there. To make possibly a controversial statement - the people that come to TouchArcade seem to be well informed gamers - like people that watch the news or know something about what is going on in the world. That is not the masses, and being successful at TA absolutely does NOT mean your game will be successful at all in the larger market. I can't tell you how many countless thousands of "hidden gems" get discussed here at TA with eager developers making changes and then wondering why their game gets almost no sales. The developers have to tell the people what they want - timers, no timers, whatever. But, to be successful, the people have to like what they get - if the developers vision does not fit in their brain - they won't play, tell their friends, etc. And, that is the big secret of success - give the people what you want to give them and have them like it and then make small tweaks. Or, it flops (more likely) and start over again with a different vision. My long winded point is that you are going to have to figure out what you think works best and make tweaks as you see fit. But, I would be very careful about taking all the TA suggestions and thinking that will make your game more successful. Probably you know all this, but no harm in reiteration every now and again. Good luck with your games.
Yikes! Oh well... BTW, thank you for sticking around and addressing my concerns. You have made me a fan. I will get the game soon to try it out. Lastly, even though the game currently does not have any "move" goals. During your testing, have you complied "optimal solutions" for all of the levels so you know the minimum number of moves for which you can solve the levels? Have you considered making these numbers known in the game as goals to show the player? From the gameplay video, it looks like that some levels can have slight variants of multiple working solutions. Is this true?
We completely appreciate the effort and the sentiment. Thanks a lot As developers, we come to this forum, not to make our games successful but to make the best game we can and put it out here for introspection and debate. I hope that makes sense. All of this conversation around the timers and the moves has got me thinking about what next can be done with this game. Maybe we will address some of those issues as updates (assuming the economics involved makes the updates affordable). Or maybe we will take these lessons forward to our next game. The coming few days will make that clear for us. The market performance as of now is very limited, and any press coverage non existent. Right now our top priority is to get the game in front of as many people as possible. Figure out what is working in the game, and what isnt. Then chart the road ahead. But most important of all: have fun all along the way
Yes, I understand pluto6's point. What is the challenge here? Solve a logic puzzle under strict time constraints? Or just solve a logic puzzle? The dev chose for the former, I would have preferred the lather, or at least separate the logic puzzle from the time constraints. We could have had a leaderboard on progression (counting stars) and another leaderboard based on time of completion (and/or number of moves). But I do appreciate that it is ultimately the developers choice and as pluto6 explained, with more weight than I ever could being a relative newbie around here , TA forum members are only a small, selective group of gamers, so what do we know? [edit] forgot to say: I do like the puzzles!
