Exilian

Game Design and Project Resources: The Workshops Quarter => Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley => Topic started by: eZanmoto on February 22, 2016, 08:07:53 PM

Title: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on February 22, 2016, 08:07:53 PM: Hello Exilian! As promised, Clever Kiwi Games is thrilled to announce the launch of our second title, Kudosu, coming this Friday! For the impatient, the demo is available >here (http://cleverkiwigames.com/kudosu)<

Kudosu is number puzzle game with simple rules and a lot of depth. Relying on your basic instincts can have dire ramifications in Kudosu, as the obvious move is often ill-advised. An ability to deduce patterns and see into the future are highly recommended.

(http://cleverkiwigames.com/kudosu_sample.png)

The influence of Sudoku in the creation of Kudosu becomes apparent when one finds out that the rules fit in a single tweet (https://twitter.com/CleverKiwiGames/status/698176768235147264). However, these simple rules hide a depth that can only be appreciated through experience. You will begin to see patterns. They will often be incorrect. You may notice similarities between levels. They're actually very different.

Clever Kiwi Games is a new indie game company that hopes to appeal to a mass casual audience by creating small games with cunning mechanics that provide a lot of replay value, and also reach out to an audience of both older gamers and female gamers that are typically neglected by modern mobile gaming. Find out more at http://cleverkiwigames.com (http://cleverkiwigames.com).

If you like this, be sure to follow us on Facebook (http://facebook.com/CleverKiwiGames) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/CleverKiwiGames)!

EDIT: urls fixed
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Glaurung on February 22, 2016, 09:56:32 PM: This looks interesting, and I was hoping to give it a try. Unfortunately, there's no url in the "demo is available >here<" link in your post. Then I went to your Twitter page, and found a link to your demo page (http://cleverkiwigames.com/kudosu/index.html) there, so I went to the demo page. That showed me your logo (nice bespectacled kiwi bird) and the text "Loading audio", but no actual demos. Is my browser (Firefox) hiding something from me, or do I need to come back later?
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on February 22, 2016, 10:44:53 PM: Oh no, I always make the silliest mistakes, thanks very much Glaurung for letting me know! The audio doesn't seem to work with Firefox and is preventing the game from loading, so I've removed it for now until I implement a proper fix. Thanks again, I hope you enjoy the game!
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on February 23, 2016, 12:03:09 AM: Well, the two four-square puzzles available were pretty simple but then they kind of would be! It's a really nice concept though, looking forward to having some more challenging ones to have a crack at :)

Will the puzzles in the real thing be pre-set or procedurally generated somehow?
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Glaurung on February 23, 2016, 12:55:09 AM: Thanks for fixing the audio - I've now had a go at the two demos. Definitely interesting, and quite subtle - even a 2x2 grid needs some thought before starting.
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on February 23, 2016, 08:51:10 AM: Thanks Jubal and Glaurung! To answer your question Jubal, they're actually both in a way :D There are 50 puzzles featured in the main game - these were randomly generated in a way that eliminated duplication in the puzzles (such as symmetries and rotations), and then filtered by hand based on how challenging they were, how "interesting" the solution was, and so on. In the full app, completing all featured puzzles will unlock "Infinite Mode", which will be purely randomly-generated and will also contain puzzles that are much easier than the featured puzzles, but mainly puzzles that are much harder. Regardless, all puzzles will be solvable (though I've doubted myself sometimes and actually had to look up solutions :P)
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Clockwork on February 23, 2016, 10:44:03 AM: I too played the demo, I'll throw the link and a recommendation around :)
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on February 23, 2016, 11:51:54 AM: Thanks a million Clockwork, that'd be much appreciated :D
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on February 23, 2016, 09:42:22 PM: Today's puzzles have been added to the demo, check them out!
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Glaurung on February 23, 2016, 10:04:48 PM: Thanks, I have. For no obvious reason I was expecting they would always be square.

I'm now getting curious about the maths and logic of these puzzles. It feels as if there ought to be a fairly simple test to determine whether a grid of numbers is a valid Kudosu puzzle - I've come up with a necessary condition, but I suspect it's not sufficient. I'm also trying to work out whether there's a reliable algorithm for selecting the cells to clear.

I'm also curious about how your puzzle generator works. The only approach I can think is a "reverse solution" - the generator picks cells in the grid (randomly?) and adds 1 to each cell in the same row and column.

One other, rather different, thought: "sudoku" means "single number" in Japanese - does "kudosu" mean anything, and if so, what?
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on February 23, 2016, 10:35:00 PM: Another interesting point, as exemplified by puzzle 4 - it's possible to have multiple paths to completion in a kusodu puzzle, though I'm not yet sure how complex the differences between paths can be.
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on February 23, 2016, 11:26:21 PM: Interesting points!

@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! You're spot on with your guess for how the generator works :D As for "Kudosu", it's simply a reversal of the characters in Sudoku, as you may have guessed :) Nice tidbit on the meaning of Sudoku though!

@Jubal As far as I have determined (i.e. not proven) there is actually only one combination of "taps" that solves a given puzzle, but the order they're pressed in doesn't matter. Knowing that the order doesn't matter can reduce the difficulty of the puzzles a bit, but I think that larger grids and "deeper" puzzles still make the puzzles sufficiently hard ;D
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on February 23, 2016, 11:56:35 PM: Yes, OK - that intuitively makes sense given that (thinking aloud as I'm typing here) the reductions are always by a constant number and so have to effectively take the form of multiple overlapping "layers" of crosses emanating from particular points. Essentially the puzzle is to find where all of the crossover points are, meaning that there can be only one soluttion; the crosspoints can't be in multiple place. I suspect it's provable in more formal terms too. Hm. Need some mathematicians on this, I'm just a mere historian!

Re Glaurung's point - it may be worth asking someone who knows Japanese if the word you've put together does inadvertently translate as anything, to avoid the possibility of launching it and then discovering that it did mean something entirely unintentional!
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Glaurung on February 24, 2016, 12:22:21 AM: Quote from: Jubal on February 23, 2016, 11:56:35 PM
Re Glaurung's point - it may be worth asking someone who knows Japanese if the word you've put together does inadvertently translate as anything, to avoid the possibility of launching it and then discovering that it did mean something entirely unintentional!
Yes, that's what I was trying to say. I'm thinking of Rolls Royce, who wondered why their Silver Mist model didn't sell well in Germany, only to discover that "Mist" means poison in German!

Meanwhile, I checked in Google Translate, for what it's worth. "kudosu" seems to mean several different things in Japanese, depending on where spaces are put. Without spaces it gave me "kudos", while "kudo su" came back as "to verbosity" (!) and "ku do su" as "to ward soil".
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on February 24, 2016, 12:10:54 PM: 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, 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.

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.
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Glaurung on February 24, 2016, 01:43:30 PM: Quote from: Jubal on February 24, 2016, 12:10:54 PM
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.

Quote from: Jubal on February 24, 2016, 12:10:54 PM
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?

Quote from: Jubal on February 24, 2016, 12:10:54 PM
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.

Quote from: Jubal on February 23, 2016, 11:56:35 PM
Hm. Need some mathematicians on this, I'm just a mere historian!
Paging Othko, paging Othko. Will Othko please come to the Kudosu thread?

Quote from: eZanmoto on February 23, 2016, 11:26:21 PM
@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.
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on February 24, 2016, 04:45:09 PM: 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.
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on February 24, 2016, 10:44:12 PM: Sound is working fine for me, both new puzzles solved fine :)
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on February 25, 2016, 04:19:27 PM: Just added the the final two levels (http://cleverkiwigames.com/kudosu/) before tomorrow's launch!
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Glaurung on February 25, 2016, 06:41:31 PM: 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!
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on February 25, 2016, 09:34:28 PM: 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.
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on February 25, 2016, 09:57:33 PM: @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 :-)
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on February 26, 2016, 02:02:04 PM: Thanks for your patience Exilian, I'm delighted to announce the official release of Kudosu on Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cleverkiwigames.kudosu)! The iOS release has unfortunately been delayed due to technical difficulties, so the online demo (http://cleverkiwigames.com/kudosu) 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!
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on February 27, 2016, 07:24:46 PM: I need to get round to downloading the Google Play version, just having a very stressful few days D:
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on February 28, 2016, 04:07:43 PM: 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...)
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on February 28, 2016, 06:36:05 PM: 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!
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on February 28, 2016, 06:38:38 PM: 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. :)
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on February 29, 2016, 08:54:35 AM: 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!).
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on February 29, 2016, 06:23:08 PM: What have you been doing to plug the game thus far?
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on February 29, 2016, 10:55:56 PM: 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 :)
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on February 29, 2016, 11:50:47 PM: It is difficult (as I know well from having been struggling through advertising this website for, ooh, nearly eight years now!) I'm not sure relying solely on organic growth does necessarily indicate much accurately; a lot of "organic" growth seems to be very much about getting to certain thresholds of people on social media beyond which the algorithms pick things up and one gets more momentum. Advertising is expensive though, it's tough; on the other hand your target audience (most of whom are beyond the "hardcore puzzle fanatics" base probably) might be hard to reach in a very targeted way through relevant FB or reddit areas. I don't really use pinterest or Tumblr, would be interested to hear how much success you get there!

I'll get some links thrown out on the Exilian social media accounts if that'd be helpful, anyway? And I'll try and write up a review in the next day or so :)
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on March 01, 2016, 09:33:41 AM: That'd be amazing Jubal, thanks very much :D Yes it is tough, I'm hoping to apply for a free entrepreneurial mentor program that they're starting up soon in my area to get a hand with it, just to find out if I'm at least on the right track and to find out what else I could be doing.
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on March 04, 2016, 12:28:06 AM: Sorry, I've been being hopeless this week - review written up here, anyhow:
http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=4375

:)
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on March 04, 2016, 11:04:56 PM: Oh wow, thank you very much Jubal, I really appreciate you taking the time to write such a review :)
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on March 07, 2016, 05:48:59 PM: No problem :) Some tweeting has occurred/will occur too!
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: eZanmoto on March 07, 2016, 07:17:42 PM: Thanks very much! I'm also in the process of adding new levels, particularly "doughnut" levels that leave certain central squares blank. This allows the use of bigger squares with the same number of moves, without making those moves as obvious as they usually are on big grids, because only a subset of the cells are actually used. I've also started having to make new levels manually (with a tool) instead of filtering generated levels because the number of combinations has gotten so large!
Title: Re: Kudosu: A Deceptively Simple Number Puzzle Game - Free Online Demo Now Available
Post by: Jubal on March 07, 2016, 10:53:14 PM: Ooh, look forward to seeing more! :)