Chrono Caverns

triplefox 2018-08-13 21:10

The game is very playable, but the puzzles are too easy! I went through the whole game and five random levels before I made a mistake.

The "draw a non-overlapping path" puzzle is a kind of genre of topological puzzle, and its usual constraining factor is with entry and exit directions, e.g. the [7 Bridges of Königsberg problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_K%C3%B6nigsberg). For an example of a recent game of this type that used some interesting constraint rules, [Galaxy Express](https://cosmicexpressgame.com/) is a good model. In this case, since you have a dungeon and lava there's an obvious incentive to add a bit of dungeon crawling stuff with keys and doors and monsters and lava being used to destroy stuff. Tons of things you could do with this scenario!

ryannielson 2018-08-13 23:54

@triplefox What a fantastic comment, thanks so much. I have lots of reading to do. I'll keep all these things in mind if I decide to continue this project or work on another in the future.

I went into this with the idea of making a super striped down puzzle game with very few mechanics. It turns out there's a reason most puzzle games are more complicated. It's not as hard as I would have liked, but I've learned a ton about puzzle game design while working on it and reading your comment. Thanks again!

azura 2018-08-19 11:09

Fun little game with a tried and true puzzle mechanic that, while I personally found too easy, fits the theme really, really well!