itch.io

A19 is a toughie. So the level starts like this:-



It *looks* easy but those two vertical teleports are a very clever trap. Something falling through the left teleport cannot easily get across to the right side of the screen and vice versa for the left. In fact the only way to finish the level is to get both shapes onto the same side of the screen *before* starting to kill anything, as the only way to get something on the right over to the left is with the assistance of one of the other blocks.


That can be hard to visualise, so if you still need help here's what I'm talking about in 'hint moves'. If you pull those 2 rightmost blocks down like this:-





you have the option of pulling either the skull or the pacman down through the right teleport. But pulling the skull down doesn't really help, you still can't get it over to the left, and pulling the pacman down will kill the 2 pacmen but make it impossible to kill the skulls.

I think this is where you're getting stuck, as you're not seeing the third option here. You can now pull the *other* pacman down to the right:-


 


This solves 2 problems.


1. It puts both pacmen on the same side of the level, making them easy to kill
and
2. It makes a ledge that the rightmost skull can drop onto, making it easy to get it over to the left.


That's the hard part of this level, realising that the 2nd set of blocks must be on the same side of the level *before* killing the first set of blocks.


I hope that's enough of a hint for you, but if you're still stuck message me here again and I'll send you a full walkthrough privately :-)

I've released a new version of the game with an optimised level select screen. I'm hoping this will fix your issue, as I'm not seeing it on my device. But a lot of people have described issues with lag so I'm hoping this version will be a little smoother.

Sorry to hear that. I've been unable to replicate the issue. Does it crash the first time you try and select a level or does it work most times and only seem to crash after playing for a while?

I *am* kind of tempted...

Thanks, hope you enjoy it!

Well I do like my hard levels to be pretty sneaky :-D

We seem to diverge on the position of a shape in the 2nd column pretty early on.

We get to here using the same logic (I think):-

But then after that my next move is:-





This is where our solutions differ. As far as I can see the only place the black circle can go in that 2nd column is in the middle, next to the 4. But you put a white hexagon there. This is what's throwing off your future placing of other hexagons.

I just tried Hard 23 again and the solution seems to be fine for me. I can help you track down the issue if you like (though I don't want to post full solutions).


First of all can you verify that this is the level you're having the problem with?

Thanks for your kind words Sukikaede, they mean a lot :-)

Hi MattAces,

there are

200 easy
150 medium
100 hard
2,000 random (ranging in difficulty from easy - medium)

There's always a ramp-up in difficulty in the first 10 - 20 levels of a difficulty so you shouldn't initially find medium any harder than easy.

And you can always go back to Easy and finish them off later, progress is stored for each difficulty individually :-) 

You totally should Sean. There's virtually no downside to writing a Playdate game,.You get a choice of languages, you don't need to pay for any resources to write / test / release etc (though Panic's Nova IDE makes debugging etc a breeze), and the community's always ready to help. Best of all you get real feedback from the people who play your game and I love how heavily weighted the community is towards positive feedback. I'm sure there's people who didn't really like Medial, but I'm only hearing from the people that did (which doesn't mean I don't get piles of *constructive* criticism / new ideas). I've found the whole experience very positive.

I don't really do anything beyond making the odd Twitter tweet. I was really only writing Playdate games as a hobby but now I've got one of them on the catalog I should probably put more time into promotion, etc.

I've got a 4th game almost finished, you should see it released on itch about a month from now.

Marking skipped levels has been mentioned before. I could certainly see it added in a future release, but I'm not sure when that would be. 

This is a very clever game!  Really adds a fresh twist to sokoban :-)

I'd love to know if you got through 93 without guessing :-)


I believe updates are uploaded to the Catalog during Panic's working hours, so I'd guess it'll be up there some time on Monday at the earliest.

That's the new version released on itch. I'm getting the new version up on catalog too so you should be able to update straight from the device soon.

Sorry for releasing an unsolvable level, but thanks for pointing it out to me so I could get a new version of it out. The new 93 is essentially the same level but with a couple of extra hints. It's very difficult, you might still need to get out pen and paper for it, but it's achievable.

I've got a new version of 93 worked out. It's still super-tough but I can prove it's solvable.

I'll get an update up there soon.

I'm loving that so many people are getting through to 93 by the way. I really didn't know if anyone would have been that invested in the game :-)

I've been trying to solve it for hours now and I can't find the solution!

I'm going to give it another day, but if I can't find a logical solution soon then I'm going to create a new level 93 for my next update.


Thanks for highlighting this one for me generic125 :-)

Love the game, very simple to learn but tough to master.  Some careful forward-thinking needed to complete some of the later levels. Recommended :-)

Thanks halkhali. I had a lot of fun writing it :-)

Hi Baratheon,

all puzzles including the random ones should have only one solution, even when you get down to the last couple of moves. If you find a similar situation please take a note of the level number. In the random curated levels there are seed numbers printed on the bottom right which would serve the same purpose. I hate process-of-elimination puzzles with more than one solution and would not want such levels in the game.


The undo problem appears to be related to the asterisks, I believe they're not being seen as moves in their own right but as extra hints to help make future moves. I'll fix that in a future update, I can see why it would be annoying to lose multiple asterisks (and crosses too maybe?) with one undo.

Well I was going for 'quirky' graphics not 'unsettling'.  Please let me know what you'd change graphically, I love honest feedback (you can improve games only when you get honest criticism of them).

Thanks debug chicken (a very appropriate name!). I thought I'd fixed that issue with the movement continuing, this might be a regression bug. I'm thinking this won't be an easy fix and I might have to do a rewrite, the movement / undo bugs are probably inter-related, so it might be a while before I put up a fix. But having people being able to cheat just by moving too fast is definitely not good.

Hi Dex. I just played Easy level 3 again and I could see no points where I had to guess. I think there are some new strategies you need to work out in level 3 and if you miss one of them that could cause you issues.

For example, level 3 relies on you working out that if there are 2 Xs in a row/column and that row / column has a medial hint, then the medial hint tells you exactly where that shape has to go (as there are only 3 spaces left there's only one square the shape can go and still be in the middle). Did you take that into consideration?

That's so weird. I can't think of any reason why coming out to the Playdate menu would encourage the game to crash next time.

Are you playing other games on your device? Do any of them crash?

Hi Xelias. I haven't been able to replicate this one. Does your Playdate crash every time you try and play Medial now?

Thanks Hekhound! Addled has been turned down for a catalog release before. I'm going to give it a wee spruce up and re-submit it one of these days but it'll probably be months before it gets near the catalog (if it all) so I'd buy it here.

Very sorry about that anommal. I found the bug and have released version 3.3. If you download the update this should fix your issue.

I love this game, very easy to pick up and play. I agree with other comments that if you haven't played a similar game before it can be hard to tell what to do, but I just assumed 'Tiny Wings' style logic would work and I was having fun in no time. I'd suggest something more obvious as a tutorial, like forcing the player to start moving by holding in the 'A' button and having text on the screen telling him/her so. It's not obvious to a player whose never played something similar how increasing gravity at the right times increases your speed downhill but at the wrong times forces you into the back side of hills and kills speed.

Hey wait, the other 2 games in this co-op bundle aren't playdate games! I'd re-think this, take my game out of the bundle and add a game that can be played without someone needing to resort to downloading a playdate emulator.

I like the idea of co-op sales so I've approved my game in this one. It's usually better to contact the devs first and talk it over before creating a co-op bundle, though.

This is the puzzle game I've played before, they're called 'ABC puzzles':- http://www.thepuzzleclub.com/abc-logic-puzzle.php

I realised that making the hints on the side refer to the middle letter / shape was better, as you could get away with not having hints on both sides of the grid (saving on screen real estate). Beyond that its a very similar game.

Thanks for the great reply scaryugly!

I played a version of this on pen and paper in uk, which had the basic gameplay. A 5x5 grid, three (I think it was the letters A, B C) and 2 spaces, with some letters and empty spaces already filled in.

Adding the minesweeper like number hints and the definitely occupied wildcards were my own additions.

I'll try to find if the version I've played before has an official name.

I like keeping to the 5x5 grid as it makes it very easy to see on the Playdate screen. I'll look into adding other variations in future updates.

I'll try to remember to cap the price to $1. I wasn't aware itch.io did that.

Ha ha! I never even noticed that! Yes, on Nov 19 Medial will be a year old!

Basically I'll keep making updates and improving any game that's still up for sale somewhere. Not fair on paying customers to do otherwise.

That should be the bugs fixed in release 2.2 :-)

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Yes, I'll make an update for the bugs, hopefully will have it tested and up on itch.io before long.

Hi Freshman 84, you can download them via PC or side loading them using the panic website should work too. I'll do some tests, maybe if you have multiple save slots in the demo and in the full game they interfere with each other.

Hi Freshman. Thanks, that's a good bug report. I can't replicate it so I've added some tighter checks to the latest version of the game. If you do an update hopefully the player select screen will no longer crash.

Could you give me a little more info on what's happening before this crash happens please? I'd love to be able to reproduce this. Do you have 2 player files, 3, 4? Were you playing the demo version before getting the full one?

Thanks :-)

I think there's a button you can press to expand on details, see what line of code it's happening on, etc. I'll keep trying to replicate it on my side.