Game about squares(gameaboutsquares.com)
gameaboutsquares.com
Game about squares
http://gameaboutsquares.com/
207 comments
I use a touch-enabled laptop and come across this far too often. Even nytimes.com is guilty of this, as is Stripe Checkout.
We actually changed this recently in Stripe Checkout. Touch detection worked great for 99% of cases, but serving a touch-only experience to devices like yours was pretty clearly unacceptable.
We're now treating the touch-only versions as optimized for specific platforms. For example, we have a mobile version that is optimized for, and only displays on, Android and iOS. Going forward, we may explore a pointer event polyfill to improve support for less common touch devices.
We're now treating the touch-only versions as optimized for specific platforms. For example, we have a mobile version that is optimized for, and only displays on, Android and iOS. Going forward, we may explore a pointer event polyfill to improve support for less common touch devices.
I stand corrected. Thank you for finally making this change... It's been driving me mad.
Why are people doing this? There must be a reason.
It doesn't answer why they want to do this in the first place.
Further more it is completely unusable on some touch devices, I tried iPad 4 and iPhone 5. They both scroll the page (better: bump to the top, as if you wanted to scroll past the end of a page) instead of moving the blocks. :-/
No problem on Android Browser 4.4
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I have a touchscreen laptop, and both touch and mouse work perfectly for me. Firefox 31 here.
Is it multitouch? Could it be that there is no TouchEvent and the touch screen acts as mouse?
I like the game and that it teaches you the rules as you play without needing any explicit instructions. I thought some of the comments between levels were annoying. Also the little flag in the corner indicating you're over the correct target could be a little easier to see at a glance.
Just curious, how do you design these levels? Work backwards from the solution?
edit: I'm a little further in, and I'm starting to think the annoying comment thing is on purpose...
Just curious, how do you design these levels? Work backwards from the solution?
edit: I'm a little further in, and I'm starting to think the annoying comment thing is on purpose...
The comments kinda ruined it for me (I did enjoy the "I'm starting to feel like putting jokes between levels was a bad idea" one).
They were alright at first but I started developing a sense of urgency, like I just had to complete a few training examples before some kind of main introduction to the "real game" (which I expected to develop into some form of a puzzle game world, with labeled levels and sections, maybe themes, etc). After more and more one liners (that don't add any substance and aren't particularly funny) I became increasingly annoyed and was trying to pass levels just to get past that phase of the game. After a while I realized that that was the whole game, and my expectations had set me off on the wrong foot, so to speak, and I lost the will to continue.
I do like the concept and the puzzles were enjoyable, but I guess my recommendation would be to leave out the comments that make it seem like they are leading up to some prize or event but never actually go anywhere. The complete lack of indication of the level I'm on and where that is in the puzzle world (Am I still in training, or...?) also contributed to me losing interest.
They were alright at first but I started developing a sense of urgency, like I just had to complete a few training examples before some kind of main introduction to the "real game" (which I expected to develop into some form of a puzzle game world, with labeled levels and sections, maybe themes, etc). After more and more one liners (that don't add any substance and aren't particularly funny) I became increasingly annoyed and was trying to pass levels just to get past that phase of the game. After a while I realized that that was the whole game, and my expectations had set me off on the wrong foot, so to speak, and I lost the will to continue.
I do like the concept and the puzzles were enjoyable, but I guess my recommendation would be to leave out the comments that make it seem like they are leading up to some prize or event but never actually go anywhere. The complete lack of indication of the level I'm on and where that is in the puzzle world (Am I still in training, or...?) also contributed to me losing interest.
I specifically liked the comments between levels, it was obvious what he did there after the second message :)
Are you from the US? I'm from the UK and I really liked the comments too. I really find that people from the US are more likely to dislike humour in this kind of game. Especially Californians.
Ever notice how people from the UK tend to generalize in a condescending way that only really serves to highlight their backward, provincial attitudes? Sort of like this?
It's true, everyone in Britain generalises. One of the most common generalisations we have about Americans is that they don't get irony.
I'm from the US, born in California, and I definitely enjoy the comments :)
Also from the US and California. I bet the guy above us has bad teeth and likes Dr. Who.
Well I'm from the UK and I thought the comments were bloody annoying, so...
Probably because people who dislike are more likely to talk about it, and well, silicon valley is in California.
This was the first thing that struck me as well - just fantastic level/game design. Immediately brought to mind the instructional level design from Super Mario Bros - http://www.theoryofgaming.com/gold-standard-for-game-design/
I really enjoyed this game. I went through every level and what amazed me most was the creativity it took to come up with the different levels of difficulty. It's not the repeated stuff you get in Candy Crush. Finding a solution is one thing but designing the levels is a different skill set altogether. We'll done.
Ads are on purpose too but they're still rather annoying ;)
Solver and solutions:
https://gist.github.com/CyberShadow/39f43cf25dac0534f8a9
The solver uses BFS with delayed duplicate detection for pruning visited states (instead of, say, hash tables).
The DDD part can be summed up in two lines of code:
I love D.
https://gist.github.com/CyberShadow/39f43cf25dac0534f8a9
The solver uses BFS with delayed duplicate detection for pruning visited states (instead of, say, hash tables).
The DDD part can be summed up in two lines of code:
prevStates = (prevStates ~ states).sort.uniq.array();
states = nextStates.sort.uniq.setDifference(prevStates).array();
// ... expand states into nextStates ...
I love D.
DDD was new to me, and I was wondering how sorting all previously visited states could be faster than checking a hash table. The answer appears to be:
1. Duplicate detection is done delayed and in bulk, not after expanding each node
2. The linear memory access of the bulk check is more cache friendly than random-like hash table access
Allow me to quote from the first Google result:
Surprisingly, delayed duplicate detection is useful even when all nodes fit in memory, resulting in reduced running time due to improved cache performance. In the standard implementation of breadth-first search in memory, the Open list is stored in a hash table. As each new node is generated, it is looked up in the hash table, which often results in a cache miss, since the hash function is designed to randomly scatter the nodes.
http://www.ijcai.org/Past%20Proceedings/IJCAI-2003/PDF/267.p...
1. Duplicate detection is done delayed and in bulk, not after expanding each node
2. The linear memory access of the bulk check is more cache friendly than random-like hash table access
Allow me to quote from the first Google result:
Surprisingly, delayed duplicate detection is useful even when all nodes fit in memory, resulting in reduced running time due to improved cache performance. In the standard implementation of breadth-first search in memory, the Open list is stored in a hash table. As each new node is generated, it is looked up in the hash table, which often results in a cache miss, since the hash function is designed to randomly scatter the nodes.
http://www.ijcai.org/Past%20Proceedings/IJCAI-2003/PDF/267.p...
I wrote a solver as a chrome extension : https://github.com/tburette/gameaboutsquaressolver
Javascript is not the best language to write AI.
Javascript is not the best language to write AI.
Nice work.
Really liked the game, but I'm colorblind and it blocked me on level 20: I can't tell which square should go on which circle ( http://imgur.com/CX7XWJ4 ). I genuinely played that level as if the two bottom squares were the same. Maybe you could add another differentiator, like a different shape.
It's always a bit of a shame when software provides no affordances for the colourblind. It's not nearly as uncommon as some people think it to be. Games and visualisation software tend to be particularly bad culprits in this.
(Also, you want the one on the left)
(Also, you want the one on the left)
While software should be designed with accessibility in mind, ideally this could be managed by the display, allowing applications to be agnostic to the needs of colour blind users. Would it be possible for displays to insert a colour-transformation layer to shift all colours to different palettes which are more distinct for each type of colour blindness? This might only work for partial colour blindness, but does anybody have an idea of accessibility software like this?
That may work as well as "ideally, applications should be agnostic to language and an automatic language-transformation layer should handle all the text".
While it's technically possible (several app stores do just that), the results are far from good quality. When colors are used to convey meaning, the transformations needed to allow blind-color users to see them will be application-dependent.
This may be enough to allow these users to play simple games, but ideally developers should learn enough about the human API so as to cater to the real needs of their users. Depending on invisible colors for gameplay should be seen as bad as letting an uncaught exception crash your application.
While it's technically possible (several app stores do just that), the results are far from good quality. When colors are used to convey meaning, the transformations needed to allow blind-color users to see them will be application-dependent.
This may be enough to allow these users to play simple games, but ideally developers should learn enough about the human API so as to cater to the real needs of their users. Depending on invisible colors for gameplay should be seen as bad as letting an uncaught exception crash your application.
At least with Chrome you can install the Daltonize! plugin. That plugin even has a "simulation" mode to help color-visible to see how your page looks like to (some of) the colorblind out there.
AFAIK, colour blindness ranges from barely an issue to an almost complete "grey-scale" style of insensitivity to colour. In general, the only safe design choice is ensuring that no decision-critical information is conveyed through colour alone.
Only if you want to catch 100% of the problems
I'm slightly colorblind and have had a hard time on the same level as the parent poster. Greyscale colorblindness (i.e. absence of color receptors) is extremely rare. PopCap does a colorblind safe mode (for zuma, peggle, etc), so did EA for Battlefield 3.
It might not be the best solution, but it's good enough for 80% of the colorblind.
There is a downside, a midway solution, although more realistic, reduces attention on the bigger problem, the rest of the colorblind population would be less catered to, but imho that already is the status quo and will be for the foreseeable future
So, service idea: pass a complex color-blindness test (on your setup) and it will generate a color profile suited for you (and your setup).
I wonder if it is possible without ruining the appearance of everything else (never really looked into how color profiles work).
I wonder if it is possible without ruining the appearance of everything else (never really looked into how color profiles work).
The bad thing about this idea is that it wouldn't be reliable for the user's eye because of the variation of color representation across screens.
The good side is that it would be a correct representation of the accuracy of color recognition of the system screen-eye, which is much more relevant from a design perspective.
The good side is that it would be a correct representation of the accuracy of color recognition of the system screen-eye, which is much more relevant from a design perspective.
I have always wondered about this.
Thanks for the tip! But after trying for a while (remembering the positions of these 2 squares), I lost patience and closed the tab. But it lost my progress, even though the game told me that it was saving my progress at each level.
That's really too bad, because the game is very fun.
That's really too bad, because the game is very fun.
I've hacked quick userstyle [1] that adds text labels into blocks, it seems like [2] then.
[1] https://userstyles.org/styles/103877/game-about-squares-colo...
[2] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1571982/shots/game-about...
I think the most annoying thing about this is that there are still 4 blocks, so why after 20 fun filled levels am I not able to differentiate the colours? I was able to, with some more care, figure out level 20 but level 21 I didn't even move a block before I knew it wasn't going to work.
Advice to author. Create iOS and Android versions of games ASAP. You are just hours away from getting cloned on app stores.
I'm hoping the author is way ahead of us. If he were smart, the game should be approved in iTunes and uploaded to Google Play, just ready for him to click "Publish" the moment this web version picks up some traffic.
Otherwise, Google Play will have a clone by the weekend if not sooner, and iTunes, maybe a week or two.
Otherwise, Google Play will have a clone by the weekend if not sooner, and iTunes, maybe a week or two.
I'm the author. I'm not very smart...
It's already on Play Store. It's called push the squares (I did not download).
This requires an order of magnitude more effort
I'm curious what would stop someone from directly copying his code and sticking it in an webview of an android app.?
Somebody will definitely do it, on a throwaway dev account, but the original developer will only need to file a complaint and that account will almost certainly get banned for such blatant copyright infringement.
Well if the copier is intelligent enough it would easy and not time consuming at all to change the code in ways that would prevent such infringement laws to step in.
what about all the 2048 clones?
Google would probably ban the developer for life. Not sure about iTunes AppStore.
Fair enough, but look at all the duplicates out there for that piano keys game or...pretty much everything.
My question was supposed to geared more towards functionality. What advantage do you have making something in html5 when it's easily stolen. How do you prove it was yours first? I believe I read a blog post on HN about a guy who was cloned like this before he made it into the play store and google banned him instead of the copycat.
I think google cache can show that you created the website with the game first, then create a text file or something on the server that the support could access to show that you actually operate the site. If the other developer that has stolen the code can't provide a proof then it's fairly easy for the support to decide. The problem is of course that you need sane support for this to work.
Is that hyperbole or would Google actually do that?
I'm not familiar with the Play Store or Android in general but it seems like a lot of clones and cheap ripoffs are available.
I'm not familiar with the Play Store or Android in general but it seems like a lot of clones and cheap ripoffs are available.
It's not a hyperbole but it's hard to say what Google would do in that situation, but I've read some stories of people getting banned.
For example, this story: https://medium.com/@sgehrman/banned-for-life-c62f2404f66
Relevant excerpts:
One day I saw my son watching Khan Academy videos on YouTube and I wondered if I could make the experience easier for kids. [...] Wouldn’t it be cool if the could just click an app and instantly watch? So this was the initial inspiration and I wrote a simple YouTube client app using the latest YouTube APIs to watch Khan Academy videos. [...] The good thing about this app idea is that I can take any YouTube channel id, plug it into and now I’ve got another new app. So, one day I posted 10 apps to the play store with a few of my favorite YouTube channels and the Khan Academy channel and it was kind of exciting. [...] A few weeks went by and I got an email stating one of my apps had been suspended. [...] The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company, and that this was forbidden. [...] After a few more weeks another app was suspended. And again I thought: “OK, 2 down 8 more to go, that’s cool.” I was planning on taking all these apps down in a few weeks anyway. Another few weeks go by and a third app was suspended and also my entire Google play account was terminated for life.
3 apps suspensions and you're banned for life. Different rules apply for different violations, for copying someone's else code I think they would ban for life.
For example, this story: https://medium.com/@sgehrman/banned-for-life-c62f2404f66
Relevant excerpts:
One day I saw my son watching Khan Academy videos on YouTube and I wondered if I could make the experience easier for kids. [...] Wouldn’t it be cool if the could just click an app and instantly watch? So this was the initial inspiration and I wrote a simple YouTube client app using the latest YouTube APIs to watch Khan Academy videos. [...] The good thing about this app idea is that I can take any YouTube channel id, plug it into and now I’ve got another new app. So, one day I posted 10 apps to the play store with a few of my favorite YouTube channels and the Khan Academy channel and it was kind of exciting. [...] A few weeks went by and I got an email stating one of my apps had been suspended. [...] The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company, and that this was forbidden. [...] After a few more weeks another app was suspended. And again I thought: “OK, 2 down 8 more to go, that’s cool.” I was planning on taking all these apps down in a few weeks anyway. Another few weeks go by and a third app was suspended and also my entire Google play account was terminated for life.
3 apps suspensions and you're banned for life. Different rules apply for different violations, for copying someone's else code I think they would ban for life.
Google plays by their own rules and likely suspends only if someone files a DCMA claim or receives multiple reports from users. It's likely an automated system if it's from users. Getting your app. reinstated is unheard of, even if you weren't in the wrong. You will have to provide undeniable evidence to have any chance at re-instatement. The three strikes and-you're-out is not a hard-and-fast rule.
Beautiful, polished, fun! Contrary to most people here, I actually like the comments between levels, and the "no instructions" policy just made it better. I wish more games were like this.
Nicely done, I have no negative comments to make. I'd totally pay for this.
Nicely done, I have no negative comments to make. I'd totally pay for this.
One can argue it isn't "no instructions". The symbols have colors and arrows. How much more do you want? Someone that can't figure out how it works from that won't get very far anyway.
There are game stats: http://gameaboutsquares.com/statistics.html
Can someone tell me how those graphs were made? They look cool. I tried looking into the HTML code, but couldn't find the info "right away".
Edit: got it. http://www.flotcharts.org/
Edit: got it. http://www.flotcharts.org/
It's right at the footer of the page, "Using flot 0.8.3"
Made it to 23 before I started to have a hard time.
I am the 1%.
I am the 1%.
It should be possible to write a solver for this with a "decision tree". There are decisions where the blocks run out of the screen - you ignore these. You only take into account "sensible" decisions (this has to be formalized). When there are multiple possible "sensible" decisions you branch. One decision consists of an action "click x times on block X and y times on block Y …"
Should be far easier to create a heuristic search solution. Very naively you could probably get good results by exploring nodes in order by sum of distances from blocks to colour points if blocks could move in any direction. You'll eliminate most of the move away and out of screen behaviours naturally and by preventing the exploration of a previously explored state. You could explore better heuristics but given that the branching factor is only n where n is the number of blocks, most puzzles are solved in under 50 moves and most solutions get pruned quickly both position duplication or bad solutions quickly mangling the heuristic. The hard problems for this program are ones where you have to make a whole sequences of moves away from the objective in order to get a key directional move that accomplishes it.
Any solution is on the form 12232322... where the number expresses what square to click. It's pretty easy to brute force the game from there. Sure, you can use tree search and prune the search a bit, but it's still brute force and may take exponential time for tough levels.
You can also look into some of the research that has been done on Sokoban AI's.
You can also look into some of the research that has been done on Sokoban AI's.
There's no need to search all move sequences, because so many of them end up in the same game state (a game state is a combination of positions and orientations of arrows, with a cut off on positions because far away ones because don't affect whether there's a solution or not).
Of the levels I saw (up to 31), the relevant board area was never more than 20x20 and there were never more than 4 arrows. So the state space had size 16(2020 choose 4) ~= 17 billion. Of course most of those states won't be reachable from the starting state... so the actual number of states you need to explore is probably more like a million or even a thousand.
I think a program could solve all of the game's puzzles in under a second.
Of the levels I saw (up to 31), the relevant board area was never more than 20x20 and there were never more than 4 arrows. So the state space had size 16(2020 choose 4) ~= 17 billion. Of course most of those states won't be reachable from the starting state... so the actual number of states you need to explore is probably more like a million or even a thousand.
I think a program could solve all of the game's puzzles in under a second.
I've written a solver that does exactly that here, it prunes positions whose blocks are too far outside the bounding rectangle:
https://gist.github.com/Zimmux/c0fdb3ddad654b6b0ae2
https://gist.github.com/Zimmux/c0fdb3ddad654b6b0ae2
Shouldn't that 16 be a 256? 4 squares with 4 orientations each = 4^4 = 256.
But yeah, definitely pretty doable with a brute-force memoized search. I imagine a lot of state space could be pruned by doing some analysis of when squares can only move further away from their home dots (and not be turned around or pushed back or anything).
But yeah, definitely pretty doable with a brute-force memoized search. I imagine a lot of state space could be pruned by doing some analysis of when squares can only move further away from their home dots (and not be turned around or pushed back or anything).
Suggestion : add keybindings. I'm spoiled by 2048 I want direct repeated manipulation at my finger tips. :)
Maybe tab to change the selected square and enter to make it move, since there's only one direction?
Cool concept, not a fan of the pointless commentary after the premise was clear (took two seconds to figure out).
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From level 25 forward ( minus 26, spirals seem to be easy to simulate for my brain ) it's a fascinating example of how your subconscious bruteforces.. I managed to finish 25 and 27 but I honestly have no idea how I did it and if I had to do it again it'd take a while.
I was wondering, for you guys out there that went past 25, were you able to visualise how the puzzle worked and plan out the moves or did you try different stuff until you got in a situation that seemed solvable and then baffled at the realization that you actually did it?
I was wondering, for you guys out there that went past 25, were you able to visualise how the puzzle worked and plan out the moves or did you try different stuff until you got in a situation that seemed solvable and then baffled at the realization that you actually did it?
I found myself following a constraint-satisfaction approach to prune the search. I'd quickly work out the unrecoverable conditions to put constraints on the overall possible moves, then start thinking about possible states both forward from the start and backward from the solution, and consider the requirements to reach those states. That tends to produce new unrecoverable conditions and prune the search further.
Still, even with all of that, there was usually one particularly hard state to achieve that required some unusual step, and everything else mostly fell into place afterward.
Still, even with all of that, there was usually one particularly hard state to achieve that required some unusual step, and everything else mostly fell into place afterward.
You perfectly described my process so now there's 2 data points. If anyone else had some different way please share.
Everything you said, plus - in the last levels I usually tried to find "the difficult thing" first. After looking at the push directions a bit, it becomes obvious that the difficult thing is going to be to position the red square, say. Then imagine possible solutions to the difficult thing, and go both forwards (after it's done the end is usually close) and backwards (how to set up the solution).
Got all 35 - I did brute forcing with a few rules:
1) Don't worry about the colors at all, because you can usually shuffle them around to get the right order.
2) If there's a particularly cute combo, it's probably part of the solution.
3) Work out the most likely last few moves, going backwards from a winning position.
1) Don't worry about the colors at all, because you can usually shuffle them around to get the right order.
2) If there's a particularly cute combo, it's probably part of the solution.
3) Work out the most likely last few moves, going backwards from a winning position.
I never finished the book, but I'm reminded of Malcom Gladwell's Blink whenever I have moments of subconscious problem solving. It's a strange feeling: insight followed by a confused determination as a my conscious mind pieces together what the sub figured out.
I love this kind of games. Reminds me of good ol' Sokoban.
Where are the mobile versions? I'd like to play it in my iPad.
Kudos.
Where are the mobile versions? I'd like to play it in my iPad.
Kudos.
Sokoban rules, you can get it for free here:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/231/Sokoban.html
You need DosBox to play that.
But there's probably a multitude of online clones as well.
Heroes of Sokoban is a great twist on the concept: http://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6860122
and Heroes of Sokoban II: http://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=6891949
and III: http://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=7072276
I made a web based one a few years ago which I'll take the opportunity to shamelessly plug: http://sokobanjs.com
And here's a text-terminal version in a couple pages of Python: https://github.com/darius/sturm/blob/master/sokoban.py -- I'd like to see more small, readable game implementations to learn from.
Save it to your homepage!
This is great. I'm especially impressed with how the game teaches its own mechanics without ever spelling anything out.
I gave up on level 28. Solving it would require pen and paper or some serious thought. The difficulty curve is excellent.
I've gotten to 31 without the need for pen & paper - but yes, your right, the difficulty balancing is great. It's had me scratching my head a couple of times, but not so much to cause me to quit.
Sign of a good game.
Sign of a good game.
No idea why you got downvoted.
Such silliness really drives me away from hn.
Such silliness really drives me away from hn.
I'm quite impressed that this works really well on firefox for android. really smooth and the interface is great.
My strategy with the harder levels was to divide it into 2 parts:
1) Ignore the colors and just figure out how to get the pieces on the goal squares (working backwards helps a lot).
2) Find a cyclical part of the puzzle that lets you swap the order of tiles.
Then you just look for any color-agnostic states in Part 2 that overlap with Part 1.
1) Ignore the colors and just figure out how to get the pieces on the goal squares (working backwards helps a lot).
2) Find a cyclical part of the puzzle that lets you swap the order of tiles.
Then you just look for any color-agnostic states in Part 2 that overlap with Part 1.
With cookies disabled, it tells me I have an "old and rusty" browser. How odd.
(FF 31 on OSX, why do you ask?)
(FF 31 on OSX, why do you ask?)
I also got that with FF 31.
For me, it was because I had dom.storage.enabled=false. LocalStorage obeys cookie settings, so I guess disabling cookies would do that too.
For me, it was because I had dom.storage.enabled=false. LocalStorage obeys cookie settings, so I guess disabling cookies would do that too.
Not working with the mouse on chrome 36. My laptop has a touch screen though and that's working
This would probably be the issue I have on my desktop then. For some reason, chrome thinks I have a touchscreen...
I am on 36.0.1985.125 m (Windows 8.1) and it works for me.
Same version and OS. 64 bit but I doubt that would change anything. Strange. Doesn't work with touchpad either
64 bit as well, MBP Retina 2013.
not working chrome 38 dev-channel (win8.1) either... works fine on lastest chrome for android beta tho.
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A very promising start and I'm very much in favor of the "randomly click to learn" approach to teaching the game rules. Can do without the comments between levels though.
I like the comments. I look forward to them after each level.
Cool game. When I saw so many points I immediately thought of 2048 but it is not that kind of game. But I like the clean look, the fun premise and the slightly snarky comments. :)
Don Quichot spinning effect (level 29) is too much for my eyes...
Just touch any square and then undo. It will stop the rotation and you're back at the initial state.
Make one move and it will stop spinning.
Cool game. The browser interface keeps appearing in ios7 Safari. Add this meta tag.
<meta name="viewport" content="minimal-ui">
<meta name="viewport" content="minimal-ui">
Finished the game after some two-three hours. The last level and the 31st level were the most difficult for me. I know that the statistics page that no identifying information is showed but it would have been interesting to see some individual stats.
http://i.imgur.com/BP5dBde.png
http://i.imgur.com/BP5dBde.png
Great game. Was it inspired by the telescope game that was on the Dyson (vacuum cleaner) website a few years ago? Seems to be gone from the dyson site now, but I've linked to a copy in a separate submission [1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8092648
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8092648
This is a glorious example of how to design a tutorial in a game without bombarding the user with piles of text! Love it!
Level 15 drives me nuts
I can't seem to get past level 17. The black and red squares always end up on the wrong sides.
You're going to love level 18 then!
If you're really stuck, here's a walkthrough/solutions for levels 0-20, https://alicious.com/game-about-squares/.
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Since I'm rather arrogant it would be nice to be able to easily compare my clicks against the statistics.
I'm stuck on the freaking 35, I just want to finish this and go eat something, any tip for the level?
Follow lifeformed's advice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8093977
Just go eat something.
If anyone is looking for puzzlers of similar difficulty to levels 30-35, I HIGHLY recommend "English Country Tune" (http://www.englishcountrytune.com/). It will turn your brain inside-out.
I really like the idea and design. I also made a game [1] about squares some time ago.
[1] : https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/swap-boxes/id753811885?mt=8
[1] : https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/swap-boxes/id753811885?mt=8
This game is fun, and cute, I like it.
One problem with puzzles of this type though, the structure of the problem leads to the solution. If you simply play with the mechanism for re-ordering boxes, you can 'brute force' the solution fairly easily.
One problem with puzzles of this type though, the structure of the problem leads to the solution. If you simply play with the mechanism for re-ordering boxes, you can 'brute force' the solution fairly easily.
I like that game and enjoying finally it on my mobile https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.funlab.squ...
Very enjoyable! Loved the interstitial comments' specialty-barista-like attitude.
And now it's cloned on Google Play!
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%22Game%20about%20Squ...
https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%22Game%20about%20Squ...
Awesome! Add sound, throw this in a PhoneGap container, and take my $2.99.
I might be dense, but all I see is a square with a triangle in it and a circle, and can't seem to make it do anything. It is throwing a 408 timeout though, so maybe its just under load?
You have to move the squares on the circle by clicking on the square.
interesting - its working in firefox but not in chrome 36.
As mentioned above, if the game detects touch capable browser (which new Chrome versions do if you're on Win8 I believe) it'll block mouse input.
i'm on windows 7 and don't have any devices connected that would be considered touch I don't believe.
Working on Chrome 36 here.
Amazing game, loved the stack on level 21. Made it to level 26, will have to come back and play more later. Go sell it on an app store and make some money for your time.
How's the stack work? I can't make it do anything else but move the blocks counterclockwise :/
Edit: Got it with stinos' comment
Edit: Got it with stinos' comment
Level 20 now. I'm a little bit color blind and 2 of the squares look exactly the same. Higher contrast between colors would be apreciated.
Is anyone else stuck on level 24? Halp!
Edit: I know this is a terrible comment that contributes nothing, please don't downvote it just for that... :3
Edit: I know this is a terrible comment that contributes nothing, please don't downvote it just for that... :3
Has anyone managed to crack level 31? Seems darned impossible, but I'm also sure I'm missing something obvious :)
Please add a window where it shows you number of clicks. And if you are revisiting a level, add your previous record
Nice job. I will love seeing this type of game over-run the play store compared to something like 100 falling balls.
Tiny bug report: after clicking on the levels and going back to level 0, all of the buttons on the sides disappear.
Simple and engaging. Nice graphics engine.
Decided to stop/stuck too long (around 5 minutes) at Level 21, which is pretty disappointing for me.
Can't click or interact with anything on Firefox 33a. Just an unresponsive start screen.
I'm stuck on level 3, help please? I seem to be missing something re: controls.
Squares can push other squares sideways.
I think there are those people who persist and work it out, those who politely ask for help (OP) and those who say "Impossible. Game is broken!" and leave you a 1* review on the App Store.
We just released our first iOS game and sadly that latter group can be enough to hurt your ratings!
We just released our first iOS game and sadly that latter group can be enough to hurt your ratings!
Do you ever get constructive feedback from 1* ratings?
I've left 1* ratings for games I play all the time because I absolutely hated the in-app purchase intrusiveness.
I've left 1* ratings for games I play all the time because I absolutely hated the in-app purchase intrusiveness.
I think you can learn something from all feedback, even if it's unfair and might've been better off sent through a support/feedback form.
I think a 1* rating for a free game relying on ads or IAP is a bit rough unless the requests are brutally intrusive. In the case of our game, we show an ad between each game that is instantly dismissible. 10-20% of the time we show an upgrade modal in case people want to ditch the ads and get extra features.
One of the ad networks we beta tested had unskippable, 30 second video ads with sound!
I think a 1* rating for a free game relying on ads or IAP is a bit rough unless the requests are brutally intrusive. In the case of our game, we show an ad between each game that is instantly dismissible. 10-20% of the time we show an upgrade modal in case people want to ditch the ads and get extra features.
One of the ad networks we beta tested had unskippable, 30 second video ads with sound!
I liked the game until I came here and felt like an idiiot for being stuck at 10
I'm stuck here too :(.
EDIT: GOT IT! woot.
12's kicking me
Nice game! I keep wanting to call it "Game Of Squares" :)
I enjoy the game. I just wish it wouldn't talk to me so much.
Nice simple game. Yet annoyingly unresponsive after level restart.
What an idea! Simple but challenging and so much fun!!
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Excellent game. So much fun and very addictive.
I would definitely pay for its android app :P
this reminds me of Vagrant Story puzzles where you have to move box crates into the right places.
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I don't think this is the next Flappy Birds or 2048. It's just not casual enough.
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I win:
window.GAMEABOUTSQUARES.Interface.completeLvl()
Nice game :-)
Fun!
And go! Tomorrow this game in full will appear on the Google Play store with the exact same colors. In 3 days this game will be rewritten in Swift, Erlang, and have a community based variation. In 4 days someone will find a way to merge this game with 2048 and Flappy Bird. In a week there will be 20 variations of this game including one called Dodge Squares on the iTunes App Store. I'm not psychic, I've just seen this script before.
These are all cool things that I would be happy to check out, play with and read about. It's either this or another Show HN filled with angry detractors (kinda like this one), something about the NSA reading my email, or the latest boycott because Facebook, Amazon, Dropbox, Google, Apple are doing something mean to someone.
I don't think so. 2048 and Flappy Bird are based on a mechanic including random gameplay. This game is full of content (design of levels and text between them). Sure, someone can clone it, but it will take them slightly longer and it will be much tougher to make variations (possibly coming up with new levels, but that's hard). It's not the same kind of game.
and every single variation is going to hit the front page of hacker news
You forgot to mention the various AI solvers that will sprung up and compete to be smartest / fastest.
And then blogposts and news articles written about the phenomena on marketing journals, Buzzfeed, newssites...
This is a really elegant game. Kudos to the designer. It's quite admirable. It has a life/death property like Go: the game seems to be about recognizing which configurations are dead and avoiding them.
The game sucks on a laptop.
The offending code (from http://gameaboutsquares.com/game.c.js, beautified):
Never do this! Remove the entire try-catch block. There is absolutely no reason for you to be limiting touch-capable users to touch-only.