Puzzle 1 and Puzzle 2

December 3, 2006

Tags: cgdc1 competition flash free game kidsafe macwinlinux puzzle simpleidea tonypa

By JohnB | add to favorites | add to your website | add this!

Two of the earliest entries into our first Game Design Competition came from the extraordinarily talented Tonypa, author of Keyway, Geartaker and a number of other creative flash games. Dubbed simply Puzzle 1 and Puzzle 2, each one is a unique take on the competition's theme of simple puzzle games that you must learn how to solve on your own. They're both excellent games and offer enough brain-bending to keep you busy for a long time.

Puzzle 1 features a series of shapes attached to a rectangle by long lines. Click on one of the shapes and it moves from the outer border to the inner one (or vice versa). After playing around with it for a few seconds you'll realize that each click shifts every line of the same color or shape as the one you clicked on. For example, if you click on a green heart, every green shape and every heart shape (regardless of color) will slide to a new position. The goal is to slide all shapes into their correct position such that all shapes turns color (they will be grey if in the wrong position), and it's certainly not as easy as it sounds. This first game is a great example of a puzzle that doesn't make sense at first but can be deciphered with a little bit of experimentation.

Tonypa's second entry is a bit more abstract. You face an 8x8 grid of colored tiles and can scroll through a larger 8x8 grid with the arrows. A row of numbers sits at the bottom waiting for you to type. As you surf through the grids your brain is frantically trying to make sense of it all. The fun of Puzzle 2 is in figuring out how the game works, so I'll save any spoilers and let you work it out on your own. Just take note of the number of squares and the colors and you're on the right track.

Tonypa has a bit of a reputation for captivating flash games, and these two competition entries really show off his talent and creativity. They both fit the theme very well and are engaging games in their own right. Puzzle 1, Puzzle 2

Currently 4.3/5
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Rating: 4.3/5 (3 votes cast)

Comments (may contain spoilers)

I still don't know quite how Tonypa's Puzzle 2 works, even though I beat it XD

Posted by: Elliott | December 3, 2006 3:13 PM

what on earth is the point here?

Posted by: tabitha | December 3, 2006 5:38 PM

I believe the "point" here is to remind people of two excellent puzzle entries for a past contest and highlight the person behind them.
If that's what you're asking ...

Posted by: Harukio | December 3, 2006 9:25 PM

one day, i randomly decided to play these two games. i started the first puzzle... and beat it in about five moves. and i have absolutely no clue how. :D but correct me if i'm wrong, wasn't the goal to get all of the shapes "on" (colored in), rather than in the middle? i can't even remember that anymore...

second one... still above my head. but gosh darn it, i'll get it someday...

Posted by: art begotti | December 3, 2006 9:53 PM

the first one is fun!

but I just don't get the second one. perhaps I am not "thinking outside the box". Or maybe I should be thinking inside the box! lol

Posted by: lab_brat | December 3, 2006 10:18 PM

Thank you for the nice review :)

I am currently having truouble loading the games from fizzlebot, hope its temporar problem.

As mentioned, in puzzle1 you are suppose to make all the shapes colored, not move them near the center. They get colored if they are in "good" position and once every piece is at correct spot, you have solved it. It is of course random each time you play :)

Posted by: tonypa | December 4, 2006 6:21 AM

In Puzzle 1, some of the starting positions are unsolvable:
if in the starting position the same symbol with the same color is once on the outer line and once an the inner line (e.g. a yellow star on the inner rectangle and another yellow star on the outer rectangle) the puzzle is unsolvable (every time you get one yellow star to the center, the other one will go outside...).

I happened to get that twice (in three tries). Not so very nice :(

Posted by: Benedicta | December 4, 2006 8:25 AM

i understand the first puzzle but i cant for the life of me figure out the second one

Posted by: letty | December 4, 2006 8:27 AM

Same to me. The first one is pretty decent.

Posted by: MobiCritic | December 4, 2006 9:18 AM

Benedicta is right, I got an impossible one 3 times in a row. If a symbol is only in one color, they can't be on different levels.

Posted by: user | December 4, 2006 9:35 PM

Puzzle one is fairly easy once you know what you're doing,
Puzzle two on the other hand is much harder, but if you have the time to think about it, it becomes clear and annoyingly ovbious *sigh* :)

Posted by: mongle | December 6, 2006 10:35 PM

so.. no spoilers for the puzzle two? *sigh*

Posted by: emo | December 7, 2006 3:23 PM

Puzzle 1 stops being impossible when you reallize JohnB has described it wrong. Read tonypas note above.

Puzzle 2 is frustrating. I don't understand the first thing about it... :(

Posted by: Stig Hemmer | December 10, 2006 10:56 AM

Oops. I've been terribly busy and let this one slip by. My apologies. I've corrected the review with a more accurate description.

Posted by: jay | December 10, 2006 2:36 PM

Hey i just wrote a program to solve puzzle#1 in the least number of moves. I tried it on several and it usually takes less than 6 moves to solve - three in one case. Unfortunately my code is very user unfriendly (written in Matlab), but i'd post it if anyone were interested.

Posted by: gg | December 12, 2006 10:16 PM

Woot, puzzle 2 is one of the funnest, funniest, stupidest, most ingenious puzzles for a long time. And I say that after completing dumbthegame.com

I spotted the odd thing after putting the whole thing together in photoshop. I was about 1/4 way through when I heard that "DING!" in my head and saw something which I previously missed. Try to take screenshots in a downwards motion =D

Realised something? In every column, there's one colour that is scarce?

Take a pen and plot down the positions of that particular colour. I used Xes

If you're still lost, just paste the whole thing in photoshop.

The numbers are right there! Just copy it down in the input box.

Hope that's not too confusing? xD

It's seriously staring at you right in the face.

Posted by: Zhey | December 23, 2006 1:32 PM

After reading the above spoilers, I can only say... duh, I am stupid :-(

Posted by: Stig Hemmer | January 4, 2007 8:18 PM

I'll put the solution for Puzzle 2 here.
Only click if you're very desperate.

If you start going downwards you will start to notice that there is a color in each column that only appears a few times. There should be a small group of them. Example: http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y138/cheeso4/Puzzle2.png
If you keep doing that for every column, you will end up with an 8 digit number.

My answer was 28940711.

Great game.
Simple when you know how, too. =)

Posted by: Mike | February 22, 2007 2:50 PM

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