Some levels are very tedious to come up with solutions. I spent hours on some. "go Home" just seems impossible to force the player back to the starting position, considering you cannot place anything on the start position tile, and any button pressed on the way from the intersection to the starting position would be pressed twice making them do nothing, really.
This is a very cool game though. 9/10 assuming it is actually possible, lol.
I posted the solution for "go Home" in one of the previous comments, as it's the level most people couldn't beat; I'm strongly considering somehow making it easier without neutering it - e.g. by focusing only on returning to the starting position and removing the rest of the level, or by adding more 'tutorial' levels before it.
Thanks for the feedback (it's hard to balance the game without it), and for sticking with the game for so long. If I can ask a question - did you spend a lot of time only on the optional levels, or also on the ones that are required to progress? I'm aware that I'll have to change some of the levels and also the the level progression, so knowing whether there are any levels that are intended to not be too difficult, but are, would be helpful.
I finished the level later on. It was a lot more simple understanding that it used the mechanic from the previous stage. And it's all right if there are challenging levels in a puzzle game, especially considering it is an option stage.
Regarding your question, i went back to all of the non-optional stages for review, and from what i remember those were fairly straightforward. That being said, i also have seen part of the game before in a youtube video, which might have helped my decision making in those stages.
I will let you know if i find out about something later on in the game, after all i haven't even progressed with the main levels that far, insisting on finishing those optional stages. (fulll circle and self-sabotage seems really difficult too, i like the challenge though)
So i only seem to be stuck on the very last main stage. It seems that the moment the solutions get really long and convoluted, it becomes very difficult to even come up with strategies to start with.
I should also mention that when i got to a level called single use downward elevator, it seemed to be introducing a mechanic, that i have already used in multiple stages before. Maybe i completely missed intentional solutions to previous stages?
I thought that the previous stages didn't have any solution where the 'player character' moves up or down, but that's difficult to verify, especially for the more complicated levels. I wouldn't be too surprised if such solutions exist (even though they're unintended), and it's probably cool to find them earlier. I'd still like to see them - mostly for a chance to create alternative versions of the levels (like what I did in 'That solution had a better puzzle' or 'Monochromatic').
Technically all the 'mechanics' exist almost from the very beginning, as there are only boxes, walls, and buttons (for now), so if you find an interaction before I force you to use it is OK; I just wanted to be sure that from some point on, the player is aware of it.
As for your problem with a convoluted path in the last level - this is the simplest solution I could design to force rebuilding an 'elevator' by moving a box upstairs - getting rid of alternative solutions is hard. I hope that showing a line that follows the solution will help with it a bit, but I'm not sure about it (I'm still slowly working on the update...). When the solution is too long or doesn't follow a simple pattern, the game just stops being fun and 30+-step puzzles are already pushing it quite a bit. Anyway, that one is more like an optional puzzle - it doesn't stop you from unlocking other puzzles, and there are no credits or anything hidden behind it.
I went through all the main stages and it seems that i only have encountered future introduced mechanics in side missions, that i haven't even completed using those mechanics, meaning those might not even be solutions for those. My bad.
I just finished the final main level, and it was by accident. I was just trying to make the path possible, and it just happened to be the solution to the puzzle. I don't even understand how this is the shortest path or one of the shortest paths.
It is ridiculous how puzzling a game can be with such few mechanics. This game gives off very similar vibes as babaisyou or N Step Steve, maybe with a little less depth reached with only 4 possible objects. It is the sort of game where i really wish i would come up with considering how simple it is. 9.5/10, there is always something to improve.
The only level where I'm really concerned about alternative solutions is 'Couldn't do it without you'. I've already found all the correct puzzles for most of the levels (30/38) - my program can usually brute-force them in a couple of minutes, but the time required grows exponentially with the number of the placeable items (and also a lot, but not quite exponentially, with the size of the puzzle), so sometimes it's not viable without renting a couple of VMs.
Spoiler warning!!! Try to solve it yourself, the game is cool!
Here is my solution to Couldn't do it without you - https://imgur.com/a/5tnIBrg
I'm sure especially with this much free space, and considering how long the solution is, there might be other ways to do it.
I experimented with this for a few hours and i only seemed to have come up with this, kinda locking the player out of one color button, forcing the loop around. I could not force the player to push the box into the button in any other way, it seems that with my solution the ai kinda just does it because it is in the way.
I was wondering how complicated it would be to just bruteforce the algorithm to find the possible solutions. Interesting how that one map was an problem to solve. Well it also was one of the most difficult maps in the game, so no wonder i guess.
Just in case i will leave some of the other difficult ones here
Again, it is a spoiler and i suggest you try to solve the puzzles yourself, as difficult as they are
https://imgur.com/a/WzpUcFY From all sides
https://imgur.com/a/doRytz0 Full circle
That's absolutely an unintended solution and I'll have to think about whether I want to fix it or not - it might be a good thing that it's solvable without doing this: https://imgur.com/a/BIiTJdu. I thought that you can't avoid building this setup, but apparently I gave the player too many walls to place. The other two are very similar to the intended solutions (the same idea, a bit different execution - as expected).