Numble Jumber - Simple Browser Puzzle Game

August 1, 2019 5:59 PM

Numble Jumber - Simple Browser Puzzle Game
The title basically says it all. I made a simple browser puzzle game. You try to move the five blocks from one side of the screen to the other and place them in order. DIFFICULTY: You can't move the blocks individually. It works best on a computer using the arrow keys, but can also use swipe on mobile. If you are looking to kill a few minutes at work, give it a try.

Role: everything

posted by Literaryhero (9 comments total)

Well that is difficult. I bounced off level 3 pretty hard, and that's after surely doing 100s of moves too many on the first two levels. Still, I appreciated how the central mechanic of the game is simple, but leads to challenging puzzles! (and also the general tidiness of the UI)

played on firefox, notebook computer, touchpad
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 6:59 PM on August 1, 2019 [1 favorite]

Funnily enough, when I made the levels I just designed them randomly and ran a script to run thousands of random moves on each map. That proved that they are all solvable, but hell if I know how on some of them. :)

Thanks for the nice feedback!
posted by Literaryhero at 7:14 PM on August 1, 2019

Literaryhero, the process of writing such a solver seems interesting to me. I'm also curious if the solver proved that it was solvable from any reachable position, or if there are ways to get stuck that can't be fixed except by undo. In general, it seems like moves are not reversible, so I would expect there are ways to "lose" a level.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 1:45 PM on August 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

The solver wasn't much of anything. I just put a for loop with like 10,000 iterations in the code and had it randomly pick a direction when the pieces ended up in the game winning position it would pop an alert. It was totally brute force.

As for getting stuck, I don't know. I certainly get frustrated trying to figure out some levels. It seems like each board only has a specific set of permutations possible, though. Like when I am stuck and I just randomly start moving around it seems like the pieces end up in the same position over and over. I have no proof of this, though, and have no idea how you would even go about figuring it out.
posted by Literaryhero at 3:59 PM on August 11, 2019

This is, indeed, incredibly annoying. Well done!
posted by bleston hamilton station at 11:54 AM on August 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

This really needs some kind of leaderboard, because I have no idea if 138 moves is averageish or an order of magnitude away from the optimal solution and thus I can't tell if I should be proud or embarrassed.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:22 PM on August 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

Schrodinger's feelings.

I have no idea how to make an online leaderboard, but I will look into it. If it is something I can do without paying for a server I will do my best to implement it.

Also, as far as I know 138 is average-ish for just about any level. It is possible to finish most levels in about half as many moves, but it normally takes many more especially on the first time. :)
posted by Literaryhero at 5:36 PM on August 15, 2019

Ask and ye shall receive, jacquilynne. Leaderboards are activated.
posted by Literaryhero at 4:59 PM on August 17, 2019

Hrmm. Now I feel incompetent and lame -- 50 moves fewer than the optimal solution on level 1. Maybe it was better the other way!
posted by jacquilynne at 11:41 AM on August 29, 2019 [1 favorite]