Numbers down the edge of a grid indicate the number of “coloured” cells in each row and column. There are a lot of Picross games, none of which I have played. I thoroughly enjoyed Cosmic Express last year which focuses the player on sequence and efficient use of space. From these humble constraints, a dizzying variety of puzzles emerge. Perhaps most challenging are the little green aliens that “soil” a carriage – other races will refuse to board a soiled carriage which tends to soil your perfect solution. There are variations such as a crossroads piece and portals.
This time, the player’s route must pick up all alien passengers, drop them at their destinations then leave the level. It has a single train with limited space for passengers. You know you’ve made it when someone writes up the latest “how to make a smash hit” on your game.Ĭosmic Express could not be more different. However, Trainyard enjoyed much success, being one of the early indie breakouts in the nascent years of the App Store. Trainyard was not for me because I did not enjoy predicting where multiple trains would be at particular times by counting squares or running experiments.
There are twists, of course: if trains “collide” their colours will combine and they will change colour if they travel through “painting squares”. Once you’ve drawn the rail, you start the trains and watch what happens. Each train has a colour and must arrive at a correspondingly coloured station. In Trainyard, the player must draw a rail to connect train depots to a destination. Rail-based puzzles such as Trainyard (Matt Rix, 2010) and Cosmic Express (Hazelden & Davis, 2017) are also algorithm games. We need not play recent Opus Magnum (Zachtronics, 2017) to delve into the world of algorithm puzzles, although we might not get such delectable GIFs. They are programming metaphors, asking the player to construct an algorithm that solves a given problem. I’ll admit I haven’t seriously played any Zachtronics titles but they all share a common trait. In this article, effectively the final part of a trilogy on puzzle innovation, I want to head away from well-worn genres and talk about designs which feel more fresh. In the last two Ouroboros essays, we’ve talked about how puzzle design iteration is innovative and examined a particular design lineage.
Hexcells plus walkthrough series#
This is the tenth part of The Ouroboros Sequence, a series on puzzle games.
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