Failing At Unique Solutions
I took a little break from puzzles and levels as trying to commit to one every day was a bit much. But three times a week is definitely achievable and still flexes that muscle!
I uploaded the last puzzle to the NIGD server which is great as I can then get a few people looking at them. But it showed that I have a bit of a way to go to secure unique solutions in these grids!
I tried another 6x6 grid today and as with a lot of these puzzles, I try to keep the session short and complete them in about 45 minutes. I used multiple drafts to explore the idea but unfortunately after testing it at the end I still found that it had a couple of unique solutions. I tried adding additional walls to block the secondary route I found but it was a little too late for it.
The initial idea was to have four entrances/exits all from one wall of the grid. I experimented with a couple of different placements with them throughout but the idea remained the same. As with previous wall experiments, it’s difficult to focus the design of labyrinths around entrances because you can’t really know if the fake ones are viable until the route and walls are implemented.
It took quite a few grids to get this final puzzle in the end but when it came to playtesting I found that different entrances could be used to solve it. This is frustrating but i think a good analogy can be drawn between this and Kakuro design. If you set up your puzzle design on providing the clues first (entrances in this case) without thinking about the answers and how the player gets to them.
The same sort of thing applies to walls in labyrinths. It’s okay to design around one or two clue ideas, but if I try to guide the solution around a set of premeditated clues it’s setting yourself up for failure. I don’t mind sharing the failures on here though as it’s just important to show the lessons you’ve learned from them as the successes!
(I flipped the puzzle horizontally for the end result to stop players reading from left to right in terms of walls and immediately getting the solution (well, one of the solutions))
