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Number Friends (Patreon)

Published:
2018-08-01 20:30:22
Edited:
2018-08-02 04:44:32
Imported:
2026-10

Content

For a little something different, today I'd like to share a little work-in-progress game that I started last night:

https://www.puzzlescript.net/play.html?p=23ca9f258106ce8f90d423b7234c86fe

How did that accidentally happen?

Well, in M Eifler's latest Amnesia Diaries vlog ( https://youtu.be/7u1dvSodeiY ) they talked about how they use brain/puzzle/logic games to get their brain out of irrational panic mode. This sounded like a good idea, and Alan Hazelden who I support here on Patreon ( https://www.patreon.com/Draknek ) had just posted his latest puzzlescript game so it was on my list.

But then I was on my non-work computer and not logged into patreon and couldn't remember how you spell Hazelden or Draknek, so I googled Puzzlescript as a first step towards brain remember web objects.

And I got to the puzzlescript page: https://www.puzzlescript.net/

Which has this big shiny "make a game" button, and I was curious about how these games are made, and one thing led to another and I started messing with it and here we are.

(edit: Stephen Lavelle, who made puzzlescript, is also here on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/increpare )

The basic mechanic is that a number disappears when it's that distance (in a straight horizontal or vertical line) from another number. I'm not familiar enough with puzzlescript to figure out how to get that to work in all cases, so if anyone is more familiar with how to get things to happen with the right timing let me know (right now there's some cases where it waits a turn to explode the number, or skips it entirely if you step in the same spot before the instructions loop around, or something). 

Edit: I have fixed the above bug. Link has been replaced with new link to fixed version

2nd edit: Link replaced again; I added a few more levels with higher numbers.

triple edit: now up to 25 levels with new immovable number block type

Not sure how much more work I'm going to put into this, but if I read through the documentation and put some work into level design it could be a fun and challenging little game. Of course, games aren't what y'all pay me for, but that little pixel triangle on a little pixel notebook sure is cute, isn't she?

Files

Comments

Sonja Black

Interesting game concept. The play mechanics are strongly reminiscent of the classic game Sokoban, except without the constraints on exactly where the numbers have to go, but with some additional constraints on sometimes needing to achieve multiple goals in the same move.

Noah Luntzlara

This is a perfect break from making slides for my research project. I don't normally play video games, but this was such a fun relaxing break. Better yet, it feels very similar in flavor to the combinatorics problems I am studying! It's based on generalizing Zeckendorf decompositions (writing numbers as sums of non-adjacent Fibonacci numbers, which you can do in a unique way). See this paper (which I didn't write) for a taste: <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.5599" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.5599</a>

vihart

Yep, it's very easy to make sokoban-like games with puzzlescript. I'm trying not to rely too much on sokoban-like level design as I explore the mechanic, because obviously it'd be easy to go that route, but eventually the game would probably benefit from encorporating some more of that.

Daniel

"Of course, games aren't what y'all pay me for" I would pay you for games. Especially if they were educational.

JD Brennan

Very cool! Kind of addicting and I'm not even into computer games.

M Eilo

My brain demands that all number friends be current n-1! For some reason it decided that n = number of spaces in between friends, instead of n = number of spaces over from friends, and now it refuses to unstick.

vihart

whoah, what a fun topic! Zeckendorf decompositions are way cool!

vihart

if you press the "hack" button on the game page, you can change the sprites to say n-1. They're just 5x5 number grids and near the top of the file!

Philip Hibbs

I spotted two bugs in your pretty code - two instances of "heavyseven", and no "nine" above.

Lukas Schüller

Vi Hart making PuzzleScript games? My life is complete! :D

lograh

Nice little puzzle game. I particularly like how it works well on mobile. The gameplay is well suited to 'filling in time while waiting for a progress bar' which happens often in my job. Thank you for sharing this with us!

Jonathan P

I wonder... if you keep building it up to include 5s, do number friends have to be on a horizontal or vertical line?

vihart

It's got 5s and 10s in the latest update, but I'm still not familiar with the engine enough to figure out how to program that behavior, so for now it's horizontal vertical only. Something I'd like to explore for sure though, as it'd liven up the level design!