Ludum Dare #54compo
Hexle
Hexle is a small number-guessing puzzle game, kindof like Sudoku, with original rules that I came up with after rattling my brain for much of the first 36 hours of the compo!
I ran out of time on the introduction part of the game, but I did try to make the game comprehensible. :smile: Also my take on the theme is a bit meta as it's mostly about possibility space, and how lower numbers of blank squares are usually helpful in this type of games.
Here are the rules, though hopefully the game itself should do a better job of explaining them when you start playing:
* all numbers appear once per 4x4 square.
* each 4 digit column and row has a restricting 'bit': 1, 2, 4 or 8.
* restrictive bits apply no further than the closest 4 digit row or column.
* restrictive bits do not apply to zeros, you should place zeros by exclusion.
* a digit cannot appear twice in the same row or column.
* restrictive bits should be guessed
*This is a compo entry, and so in accordance to *the rules* I made everything myself within 48 hours.*
It was my first time ever making a puzzle game, I'm quite happy I managed to finish it and make it playable! Please do let me know what you think of it!
edit: as is authorized by the Ludum Dare rules, I fixed a crash when trying to restart a level, and fixed the phrasing for rule #5. *(the previous phrasing was plain wrong, sorry* :sweat_smile:*)*
I ran out of time on the introduction part of the game, but I did try to make the game comprehensible. :smile: Also my take on the theme is a bit meta as it's mostly about possibility space, and how lower numbers of blank squares are usually helpful in this type of games.
Here are the rules, though hopefully the game itself should do a better job of explaining them when you start playing:
* all numbers appear once per 4x4 square.
* each 4 digit column and row has a restricting 'bit': 1, 2, 4 or 8.
* restrictive bits apply no further than the closest 4 digit row or column.
* restrictive bits do not apply to zeros, you should place zeros by exclusion.
* a digit cannot appear twice in the same row or column.
* restrictive bits should be guessed
*This is a compo entry, and so in accordance to *the rules* I made everything myself within 48 hours.*
It was my first time ever making a puzzle game, I'm quite happy I managed to finish it and make it playable! Please do let me know what you think of it!
edit: as is authorized by the Ludum Dare rules, I fixed a crash when trying to restart a level, and fixed the phrasing for rule #5. *(the previous phrasing was plain wrong, sorry* :sweat_smile:*)*
Genres: puzzle
Comments22
Thanks for the feedback!
My only suggestion would be maybe to hint the goal of the game in the begining, because the rules described pretty clear, but a player can get confused and be left with a question: yes, but what is my goal here? But maybe it's just the intended process of learning as you planned)
Initially, rule 6 seemed really daunting but after actually giving it a try it was clearly doable :smile:
I did feel like I had to take notes on possible restricting bits after they were hidden; I wish that it would've been possible to do that in-game.
Still, this was a wonderful game with a nice and clean look, and congrats for submission!
I can't imagine how hard it must be to design such rules and then make a good enough puzzle generator based on them. I'm really admirative! The polish and game feel are also really good, well done!
Overall it was a bit difficult to grasp everything for my post-compo brain, but I still had fun and might come back to it later to do some daily puzzles!
The buttons were pushed slightly off the bottom during tutorials but not in the main game. Great work on the tutorial btw, it's unusual to see that in a jam game. :) Also I liked the sfx!
My technique was to place the 1,2,4,8 first then work through from 3-F in each corner. For some reason, there weren't many times that the rule about numbers being unique in a row/column helped me.
It's really fun; great job!
this is a very cool sudoku modification, im surprised i havent seen it before! it works really well. and fits the theme great of course :) very nice work
!> single bit numbers seem to give a lot more information than others and greatly limits the possibilities.
It was great that the game was helpful in showing the bits of all numbers, else I would probably have given up.
At times I would have liked being able to take notes about possible values in a cell without guessing but within the scope of the compo, I very much understand why it would have been one too many features.
It also felt a bit like cheating that the game let me know when I guessed wrong, and I would have liked being able to disable that and instead only get evaluated when the board completes.
Perhaps you should submit it to the "Cracking The Cryptic"-youtube channel...