Lineage 2

Grow v2 felt much simpler to solve for me, but maybe that’s because I’ve grown accustomed (as it were) to how to think about these games.

A little Christmas distraction for this week. Those of you who have been puzzled by Grow, Grow RPG, and Grow Cube may like the special edition Happy X-mas miniGrow just released by Eyezmaze. It has two fewer objects than the…

Fox’s braggadocio encouraged me to spend a bit of time with the games – I completed Grow RPG last night and Grow Cube just a few minutes ago :). The Grow puzzles are extremely fair; unlike “bad” puzzles (e.g. some of the more frustrating puzzles in some IF I’ve played), where, when you finally look at the hints, you think “I would have never thought of that in a million years”, the Grow puzzles really are solvable in a relatively small number of tries, just by thinking about the levels achieved by the various objects at the end of the game, and leveraging the metaphors invoked by the game imagery.

Actually, this aspect frustrated a colleague of mine regarding this game. She wanted the growth “metaphors” and “logic” of the system to play out in a coherent way that informed selection of the order of objects. In fact, the metaphor informs the reward structure, a coherent narrative — especially in the case of grow rpg and cube — plays out. However the order of selecting objects does not correspond to a logic outside of that reward structure, i.e. it is not possible to reason outside of the gameworld regarding the order of objects. For example, reasoning like “water should come first to support life” does not work, reasoning such as “water should come early so that the tower that develops does not collapse” does work.

If the metaphors played out in a coherent way it might be more compelling in a way, though it might be easier in the end. Part of the game is to figure out the quirky sense of reasoning required within the gameworld, as opposed to in the “real world.” I imagine that such a game would be effective as well and would appeal to a slightly different audience. Of course an isomorphic game without a compelling reward system would not function well. Think of fully deterministic games like Candyland. The reward system and metaphor (compelling art and locations in the gameworld) are all there is. Imagine Candyland without the candy!

I think this is a fun aspect, but several people I showed the game to (who perhaps were not willing to put in the time to learn the system without a clear set of rules — though rules do appear in the html!) did not enjoy the game exactly for this reason.

Now, for the braggadocio: I completed all three of these games ;) .

I’d be interested to see what an isomorphic puzzle, framed differently, would play like. I suspect that the growth metaphors and the visible signs of the “logic” of the system help many people to figure it out. Other methods of presenting the same system might prove unpleasantly difficult.

I couldn’t help laughing at the geeky (and correct) way of looking at it.

I think I got 18.000 or so…