Deco Deck: a new logic puzzle
May 16, 2023 7:33 AM Subscribe
Deco Deck: a new logic puzzle
My new game, Deco Deck, is now available for iOS, Android, Linux, Windows, and Mac. In Deco Deck, there's a grid of cards. Each card has one of five suits, and a number from 1-9. The goal is to link up the cards in connected groups of five, such that each group forms a valid "hand". The hands are: straight, flush, full house, five-of-a-kind, and rainbow. A rainbow is one card of each suit. Each puzzle has only one solution. There are new puzzles every day.
After the success of Semantle, I quit my job to make games full time. Well, almost full time -- I ended up spending a fair amount of time this winter on childcare, since my kid's school closed down unexpectedly for a month. This is my third game since Semantle, and it's the one I enjoy most. I am totally addicted, and I play it every single day.
Here's my blog post about the development of the game.
My new game, Deco Deck, is now available for iOS, Android, Linux, Windows, and Mac. In Deco Deck, there's a grid of cards. Each card has one of five suits, and a number from 1-9. The goal is to link up the cards in connected groups of five, such that each group forms a valid "hand". The hands are: straight, flush, full house, five-of-a-kind, and rainbow. A rainbow is one card of each suit. Each puzzle has only one solution. There are new puzzles every day.
After the success of Semantle, I quit my job to make games full time. Well, almost full time -- I ended up spending a fair amount of time this winter on childcare, since my kid's school closed down unexpectedly for a month. This is my third game since Semantle, and it's the one I enjoy most. I am totally addicted, and I play it every single day.
Here's my blog post about the development of the game.
Role: Game designer and programmer
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Personally, I prefer pencil puzzle games where you can slowly make (and write!) conclusions. For example, Puzzle Retreat is an enjoyable UI but is terrible for deducing a solution. I ended up screenshotting puzzles and annotating the screenshot on my phone to solve, annotating the direction and partial ordering.
So far, it feels a bit like Dominosa, where you end up scanning for ages for a foothold into the puzzle, but honestly my play style thus far has been guess and check. I'm not even sure how to annotate the puzzle yet, each cell has four walls and one of five hand options. With color and numbers taken, I'm left with letters and three of the five hands all start with F.
Strategically it seems like you start in the corners and work from there, just because the search space is more constrained and likely to yield a result.
posted by pwnguin at 2:53 PM on May 23, 2023