Author Topic: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available  (Read 9538 times)

Glaurung

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Further thoughts on provable properties of the game - I think that if my thesis above (that the aim is to click on all the crosspoints but the order doesn't matter) is true
I think it is. The moves are based on addition and subtraction only, so I believe they are "commutative" in the mathematical sense, i.e. the order doesn't matter.

it also should hold true that it is impossible to make an incorrect move (that is permissible by the empty-square-lock rule) and still win the game. I certainly can't think of a scenario in which one could make a set of other moves to "correct" an incorrect one.
My gut feel is that this is also true, but I'm not sure I can prove it. However, I'm pretty sure that each move is unique (i.e. there's no way of achieving the same effect by any combination of other moves), and since moves are not reversible, there's no way to fix things once you've gone wrong. Maybe the game should allow a few"undo" moves, with the exact number based on the size of the grid and the difficulty?

Thought on game design - it would be nice if the game told you when no more moves were possible and you've "lost". I mean it should be obvious, but I'm not sure it always will be with more complex puzzles.
It's "obvious" in the sense that every row and column will contain at least one empty cell, but I agree it might take a while to spot this in a larger grid.

Hm. Need some mathematicians on this, I'm just a mere historian!
Paging Othko, paging Othko. Will Othko please come to the Kudosu thread?

@Glaurung I haven't actually considered or implemented a validator, and off the top of my head I can't think of an algorithm for solving the puzzles other than to brute force them, which I suppose is a nice property if it holds!
If you always generate puzzles by "reverse solving", then you don't need a validator - puzzles created this way will always be valid. You only need a validator if you create grids in other ways and then want to see if they are valid kudosu puzzles.

My minimal criterion for validity is that the total of all the cells in the grid has to be a multiple of (number of rows + number of columns - 1) - e.g. for a 3x2 grid, the total of the cells has to be a multiple of 4 (3 + 2 - 1). But I think this is not sufficient: if you take a valid grid and swap two cells with unequal numbers, the total for the grid will still be the same, but the grid will almost certainly not be valid any longer.

My suspicion is that there is an algorithm for determining the solution, and it probably gets expressed as a set of simultaneous linear equations (much like sudoku). But solving them might well require the same effort as a "brute force" solution.

eZanmoto

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Ah, I see what you mean now, that would be embarrassing; I checked the full word, but not the different components of it, thanks guys!

@Jubal: That's a nice idea, since it may be difficult to see when no more moves are possible sometimes.

@Glaurung: Wow, you've really dug into the theory! I also believe the commutative property holds, and that you can't "work around" an incorrect input, though proofs are beyond me also. It would be interesting to know what a validator for it would look like as well, because without one then the validator would also require a brute force approach, meaning that a brute-force solver would be quite infeasible!

Also, levels 5 and 6 are up now, enjoy!

EDIT: Oh, and I believe I've fixed the sound issues, please let me know if you encounter any more problems.

Jubal

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Sound is working fine for me, both new puzzles solved fine :)
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eZanmoto

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Just added the the final two levels before tomorrow's launch!

Glaurung

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The sound works for me too :)

The latest two puzzles show that one of my assumptions was wrong: I had assumed that you needed to click on any cell at most once. I definitely wasn't expecting that one cell would be used twice!

Jubal

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Are all the puzzles either square or rectangular? I realised that one could hypothetically have L-shapes, s-shapes, or indeed "holes" in the middle of puzzles using the same rules.
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eZanmoto

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@Glaurung Glad I was able to surprise you  :D

@Jubal They are, but not all of the puzzles use all of the cells. Having bigger "holes" or different shaped grids could be an interesting spin though, I might add such puzzles in a future update if you don't mind me adopting the idea. Thanks for the suggestion :-)

eZanmoto

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Thanks for your patience Exilian, I'm delighted to announce the official release of Kudosu on Google Play!  The iOS release has unfortunately been delayed due to technical difficulties, so the online demo has been updated with all easy-difficulty levels to try and help alleviate the wait.

Please let me know what you think, and be sure to share us!

Jubal

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I need to get round to downloading the Google Play version, just having a very stressful few days D:
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Jubal

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Right, finished the last of the hard puzzles just now :)

A few things I noticed:
- Larger sized grids tend to make puzzles a little easier if anything, as "crossbars" of numbers jump out more.
- Higher numbers of points to find make things exponentially harder
- Learning how to spot when a grid is unsolvable helps a great deal in doing the game efficiently

And some suggestions:
- A difficulty level above hard, given I managed to do most of the game in one sitting.
- Being able to set the difficulty level on the infinite puzzles would be lovely

Basically yes, really enjoyed it, more of this please :) (Also I should get round to writing a review of it...)
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eZanmoto

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Thanks very much Jubal, I appreciate your feedback :-) Your first two observations are particularly acute, higher difficulties should probably focus more on having larger numbers of taps on smaller boards. Very nice suggestion on the difficulty of the infinite mode as well - I'm also thinking of having a feature where you can save/share interesting puzzles you come across in infinite mode, but this is just an idea at the moment. Thanks again for the feedback!

Jubal

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You could even make a "builder" mode as well for people to set puzzles - allow them to set the grid size and shape, then let them build a puzzle by reverse solving, letting them tap in each place they want to put the centre of a "cross" adding 1 to the row & column. :)
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eZanmoto

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A puzzle maker didn't make the original release but was definitely on the feature list :) The only problem is that the game hasn't been getting very much traction, so even though I'll be making fixes and potentially adding levels I don't think I can justify adding big features at the moment (thought it's something I would love to add!).

Jubal

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What have you been doing to plug the game thus far?
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eZanmoto

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So far I've been showing off the demo on my FB page and related indie pages, on Twitter, posted about it on Reddit (got a lot of criticism on r/puzzles), submitted it to IndiePlus, and sent press releases/media kits to over a dozen indie game/smartphone sites, all with very little response (only 2 review sites responded, 1 of which to say that they don't offer free reviews). I don't have the budget to do an ad campaign at the moment, but I'd rather grow the traction organically anyway because it'd give a more accurate indication of actual interest. I'll be trying to take advantage of Pinterest and Tumblr more in the next weeks to, as their user demographics tend to overlap with my anticipated markets. After that I'm not too sure, still very new to marketing  :)