10x10 solved. It seems too easy. It is almost an auto solver, you just have to find two blocks of the same color together, or two blocks with the same color with an empty block in-between.
Great for a young person, but I would like to see a version with more rules and constraints to follow.
Oddly enough, I found the 10x10 easier to solve then the 6x6 and the 8x8. After a couple play-throughs I think I know why. When trying to determine your next move, there's 3 options.
1. Look for a chance to play a block that wouldn't cause a chain of 3 colors together.
2. Look so see if the row or column has enough of a certain color in it.
3. Look to see if the row or column is a duplicate of another.
1 and 2 are easier to spot, but 3 is actually quite difficult and takes a lot of time to determine. On the 10x10, option 3 is almost never the determining case, probably because there are so many more possible configurations for a row or column, vs on a 6x6.
Those three heuristics seem to work for the puzzles on the site, due to a limitation of the site's puzzle generator. However, there exist puzzles of this type which cannot be solved using only those three heuristics.
Take this one, for instance:
- O - - - -
X - - O X -
- - - - - -
O - X - O -
- - - - - O
X - O - X -
This puzzle has the unique solution shown below, but none of your three heuristics will make any progress on it.
O O X X O X
X X O O X O
X O O X O X
O X X O O X
O X X O X O
X O O X X O
One of the ways you can solve this is to note that the square in the upper-left corner must be O. This is because if it were X, then there would be three adjacent Os in the first column. This insight is due to [email protected].
Except that your puzzle has multiple solutions, so I'm guessing that's why it breaks the heuristics. The same would be true of a sudoku puzzle with too few starting numbers.
O O X X O X
X X O O X O
O O X O X X
O X X O O X
X X O X O O
X O O X X O
Glad to see this comment too.. I thought I was hitting a bug or something (making the game way too easy to solve :p). Just turning off the hints would make it much more difficult imo.
More constrains does not necessary translate to less choices. And even when it does, less choices do not necessary make it an easier game.
For example: I remove undo move, then you certainly have less choices but, the game is harder( even for a computer ), since you have to remember previous states which were previously accessible via undo.
Great for a young person, but I would like to see a version with more rules and constraints to follow.
The UI and the UI feedback is outstanding though.