Post by Alectric in Discussion and Feedback [Spoilers Allowed]

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Just played this and wanted to say how good it was. Many layers and tricky but fair misdirections, like how in puzzle 2 you could find MOBSTER and NOTARY before realizing the theme and the mirroring rule. Very well done!

I just have a bit of feedback about where things didn't quite feel so fair and maybe could be improved.

In puzzle 10, the the L for LIBRA is supposed to be behind that small blot in the bottom-right corner of the left page, right? But that blot seems too small to actually fit a letter behind it. It's a good idea, to make the player ignore it until realizing it must be covering a letter, but it was so small that I continued to second-guess it even after deducing that it must be the case, so maybe it ought to be just a bit bigger. Similarly, the blot covering the o3 hint for puzzle 5 also doesn't seem like it would actually be big enough to fully cover the text.
The puzzle titles seemed to be meaningful hints and quite clever, except I'm not sure what puzzle 10's was meant to mean. "Splinter from the Previous" ended up leading me way down the wrong path, thinking that some words were split across gaps (like the two blank spaces in puzzle 3) or even wrapped around from one edge of the layout to the opposite side, similar to how "A Twist" was the introduction to words needing to change direction mid-way. You already broke the normal rules of word searches in a few ways, so I figured that was just another layer of difficulty you intended. Maybe the title is meant to refer to puzzle 2 which was also Zodiac? But I still don't see how "Splinter" makes sense for that, and I think it would be better to avoid the risk of giving people the wrong idea that I got.
I solved the "AS YOU NOW HAVE WON" message for puzzle 12 on my own, but it was only after coming here that I realized it's meant to be combined with the other messages and have every even message flipped. I didn't bother writing out all the previous messages again, because I thought that was simply for tracking what to search for (as was the case in all previous puzzles), and I figured I could just refer back to where I had already worked them out. I can see how the previously established patterns would have pointed to arranging the messages accordingly on the lines, but the last message (which is the same as the puzzle 12 solution) is shown starting with A, and that's also the direction it's read, which breaks the pattern of messages on the right side needing to be read backwards. So I think it would be good to resolve that discrepancy, and to make it somehow a more explicit part of finishing the puzzle that all the messages need to be combined into one long one. Even the last page implies that finding all 144 searches is the only goal, with nothing else to do beyond that. I'm glad I followed up and checked the comments here, though, because I have a much greater appreciation for this now that I know the full resolution.

Playcebo275 days ago (1 edit)

Thanks for all the feedback. Glad you appreciated the misdirect in 2, that was my favorite bit.

1. For what its worth... all blotted letters are actually there, under the blots!

2. Ah, good to know. It was meant to reference the previous puzzle's theme, astronomy. I'll see about finding a better name. Perhaps just "Signs".

3. Oh, right! I've been meaning to clue that a bit better. Any suggestions? I might add a second single-letter clue to a different blank, like the "A" clue. Or And I could add something to the last page like "Message received?" in green ink or "Message Received: [checkbox]" in an orange box.

Alectric275 days ago (1 edit)

I believe you, but what's difficult to suspend disbelief for is that seemingly random or accidental blots would have landed just so precisely as to not be even slightly larger than necessary. There's a saying that "the difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense," and I think the game would benefit from not making the presentation any more contrived than absolutely necessary. You already stretch things a lot, for example by the placements of the search hints at the bottom varying a lot rather than being standardized, and here is a situation where you could at least adjust it easily to no be quite so contrived. But it's just a thought, not something I feel all that strongly about necessarily.
I see. How about "A New Spin," to play off of both "Round and Round" and the previous Zodiac theme?
Well, the biggest problem is that you want the even messages to be written as received and read in reverse, to match the other puzzles, but you also want them to be written in reverse so that all the messages could be read together more easily. Considering inclinations like my own to not write out the messages again just for searching, I would embrace that and make it so that instead of spaces to be filled in, the right side of puzzle 12 simply had the puzzle numbers to refer back to. Or instead of straightforwardly giving the numbers, maybe just give a clue for a few of them that reference the puzzle/message indirectly, like the foe carton doodle again. Definitely put the A at the end for the last clue instead of the beginning, though, and/or make it start with an N. And then, on a new page after the last puzzle, it could have 12 spaces to be filled in explicitly, in a descending list, maybe with quotes capping the beginning and end. The ___/144 tracker isn't really needed, and may even be misleading. But you could put a note in green ink, like "One last thing to figure out..." or "Now to put it all together..."

Playcebo271 days ago

3. How about extra hints and individual __s, to nudge players toward filling out the word list? https://imgur.com/a/VAZhG0Z The "D" and "N" on the right would hopefully clarify the proper orientation of words. (I specifically want the message spelled out via a two-column list because the canonical leftovers are, e.g. "reviled" (r7) not "deliver" (d7), as shown by the bottom-right corners.)

Alectric270 days ago

You still left the last slot in the list starting with A, though. As I already tried to explain, "the last message (which is the same as the puzzle 12 solution) is shown starting with A, and that's also the direction it's read, which breaks the pattern of messages on the right side needing to be read backwards." So replace the A with an N, or put the A at the end. The last clue on the bottom-left (under the smudge) also needs to start with 'a', not 'n', as the clues correspond to how the terms are read, aren't they? Or am I misunderstanding something?

Personally, I would only see those nudges as helping to confirm what to search for in the last puzzle. They wouldn't make me any more inclined to write everything out in the columns. And even if I did write them out, there's no guarantee that I'd realize they're meant to all be read in sequence. I still feel my previous suggestion is the best way to ensure players reach the intended ending. But that's just my opinion.

Playcebo270 days ago (5 edits)

Regarding the orientation of the final "word" (n15), here's how my logic for how it works:

The trick with Puzzle 12 is that its 12 "words" don't need to actually be words, they just have to be the leftovers.

All leftovers are read top-to-bottom, so the canonical leftovers include nonsense like "foec@rton" (f9). The leftovers are not the reversed versions like "deliver" (hence no "d7" clue). You can confirm this via the bottom-right hints, and also the bottom-left hints of puzzle 12. So for consistency, the bottom of page 12 must say "n15" just like it says "f8". *

The reason I did it this way is so that when the leftovers ( "reviled", "foecart0n", "nowevahwonuoysa", etc.) get written backwards on the right side, the result is a perfectly-readable left-to-right message that's hard to miss.

Hope that makes sense!

*unless I changed the bottom of 12 to have hints like "n8" for "notraceof".

Alectric270 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

I think I finally get it. The reason it didn't click for me is that thus far, terms on the right column seemed to follow a rule that they always had to form a valid word or phrase when read from right to left. "nowevahwonuoysa" would be the only one not to follow that rule. Actually, more than that, it breaks the bigger, more important rule of these "word searches" always involving searches of actual words, not simply nonsensical letters, so long as you see right-column terms as simply being reversed.

I didn't notice that the puzzle 12 hints were all the same as the bottom-right corner hints, even for ones that go in the right column, which would indeed necessitate writing them backwards. I think I would in fact find it more intuitive if you instead switched up the puzzle 12 hints for the right-column terms as you say ("n8" for "notraceof"), so that they would get written the same as on the previous pages, and this would allow the final term to also follow the pattern of being valid when read backwards from how it's written. Then you could do one last page after where everything gets written out properly, with the right-column terms only reversed there for the final message.

I can see what you were going for, with the elegance of having the final puzzle also serve as the final message all at once, and maybe this isn't an issue most people would be confused by like I was. But speaking for myself at least, it almost made me miss the final message entirely, and I think my suggested approach would help ensure that people understand exactly what you want them to see at the end.

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