One unstated rule is that you have to use all pieces. Number three can already be solved with two pieces and that also doesn't count. I strongly dislike this kind of puzzle.
That also happens on an earlier level. The answer appears to be that there is an undocumented requirement to use all of the tiles. I'm not sure why Google appears to believe that documentation is weakness.
There's even documentation. Clicking on the (i) icon says "Place tiles on the grid to create a path for your marble". It would be so easy to just change it to "Place all tiles..."
There's a "help" popup indicating the existence of keyboard controls. Then, in level two, you have to rotate tiles, for which no control is documented. What gives?
Oh man I was so confused when I couldn't solve level 2. I even double checked the instructions that there was no rotate key. I'm on a laptop with a nub for a mouse and I'm spamming various keys to try to figure out how to get a piece to rotate and I haven't been successful.
I can also select a piece and hit space and it grows in size and goes outside of its box for some reason? Is that relevant to solving puzzles? Or a bug? I guess I won't find out since I can't rotate pieces to progress further ....
The presentation is nice but the content of the puzzle put me off. I think if you suggest a physical puzzle by presenting it as a rolling ball then you should honor correct physical intuition such that a ball isn't going to turn left by itself as it does in puzzle three. I'm interested in testing my wit, and I am fine with losing, but I am not interested in just finding the correct way to clap like a seal for the puzzle designer.
There’s nothing wrong with it. That’s part of the fun of games – feeling smart and accomplished.
But it’s pretty clear and obvious (to a reasonable person) how the game works and you seem to want to just brag about how you’re clearly a better thinker and smarter than the game designer.
It's not clear at all and you can read comments here to find that out.
I don't know the game designer especially but what I actually think is that the system (ie org+people) that produced this puzzle is much smarter than I am. I just don't think the puzzle design is appealing and I gave an impersonal argument to that effect. You have a duty on this side to take comments in good faith. If I give you a factual argument about why I dislike a puzzle you don't just get to accuse me that it's really about intellectual girth.
> such that a ball isn't going to turn left by itself as it does in puzzle three.
I'm willing to deal with some trial and error with stuff like that, as long as it's predictable and cause-and-effect is consistent. What I'm not willing to deal with is what I'm seeing in puzzle seven. I have a crossroads with a U-turn to the north and a curve to the south. The ball enters the crossroads from the east and goes south. If I remove the northern U-turn (which the ball hadn't visited and was therefore useless), the ball now goes north (and into the void) instead of south to safety.
Then you have the obnoxiously loud music that can't be turned off separately from the sound effects (so you either have annoying music or no audio feedback at all), a condescending "keep trying" popup that treats every test as a failed attempt, slow animations that make for an annoyingly slow feedback loop on trying new things...
It's a really cool concept, fun presentation, but execution is all sorts of terrible. You could easily run a game design masterclass centered on fixing this thing.
Just assume that there is no goal other than closing all the paths. A tile that connects to empty space means you're wrong. A tile that connects to another tile means you're right. Any and all other "rules" will be changed as necessary to ensure that, if a solution is pretty, it's also correct.
Start, curve west to south, "Y" piece, curve north to east, curve west to north, reverse, back through the last two curves and the "Y" piece (unintuitively the ball will take the left to the finish).
I scratched my head for a while trying to find a configuration where the ball traversed that Y piece intuitively (entered the curve from the west, was reversed, and then exited the straight to the north) before giving up and trying the same "impossible" solution.
Maybe it's a tie-in to their presentation - perhaps they have a new model like Sora which has a poor understanding of physics. (This would explain why the ball starts flat and ends going uphill as well.)
For a quick, breezy puzzle that you should be able to do within the space of a coffee break, this feels like it moves way too slowly. Takes a bit for the ball to start rolling and the fancy zoom-in animation gets tedious fast.
You are indeed correct, although a few Googlers typically will help as well with the launch. If I remember correctly the front end JS devs handle most of the site and the puzzle itself is done separate. However, perhaps they changed it up this year.
There is a famous Marissa Meyers party at Yahoo! that this reminds me of. I thought with all the layoffs, Google was getting disciplined and everyone in line. Maybe that is not the case. When Microsoft brought in Nadella, they did some belt tightening as I recall. My understanding is that Meta is using the whip to get everyone focused. So maybe they have a better future? Or maybe G doesn't think they have an existential threat.
Seems like this crowd is upset over a children's puzzle game. Thought it was alright, has decent graphics that shows what can be done procedurally without the need of carefully hand crafted assets.
See if being a children's game has any impact on your feelings about Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby then :p.
Small Google games are often actually really decent, especially in comparison to this, so I think that's where some of the disappointment comes from. The Doodle Champion Island one was my favorite.
There are frustrating implimentation details like puzzles not being solved if you do something that looks obviously right but some subtle unwritten rule means it's wrong. In game design (and all UX really) when something looks right then it should be right. The user shouldn't ever have to think very hard to understand why something is wrong. This game fails in that regard.
I don't think it was intended to be a children's game; they're not the target market for Google I/O.
But also, in this be situation there isn't much positive to be said about the game. Everything about it is badly done. I'm fairly sure the criticisms (vague and badly communicated rules, clunky UI, graphics style that doesn't fit the puzzle, announcing music without a separate music control, way too many slow animations in the wrong places, browser compatibility issues) would be the same if this was a Show HN.
It's just that none of it is being given as constructive feedback. But even that makes sense: unlike for a Show HN nobody will be applying the feedback to fix the game.
(What I don't get is how this is so high on the frontpage, unless it's just for the schadenfreude.)
Is one of the rules that you have to use all the puzzle pieces? Because puzzle #3 is easily solved with only two pieces yet that is not the "correct" solution.
"Chrome's FileSystem API is disabled in Incognito Mode to avoid leaving traces of activity on someone's device. Sites can check for the availability of the FileSystem API and, if they receive an error message, determine that a private session is occurring and give the user a different experience."
Things started getting tricky at level 7. I can see that level 8 is solvable, but I'm not going to have time to solve it before leaving for work. Neat little puzzle.
Clicking start leads to "Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information)." apart from Safari, which serves me up a frozen game. Console errors complain about
"THREE.WebGLRenderer: A WebGL context could not be created. Reason: WebGL creation failed:
* tryNativeGL (FEATURE_FAILURE_CGL_FBO)
* Exhausted GL driver options. (FEATURE_FAILURE_WEBGL_EXHAUSTED_DRIVERS)"
Any tips? Are there magical flags that should be set somewhere?
Focus on laying out all the pieces, such that there are no dead ends. There's very few ways to do that, afterwards you can quickly brute-force the rest.
The winning move might be to not play, tbh. It was by far my least favorite level.
Spoiler alert: in puzzle #3 what properties does the "track switch" piece have that makes the sphere take the turn instead of going straight on its way back from the bouncer? Doesn't look very physically correct.
99 comments
[ 6.5 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadI can also select a piece and hit space and it grows in size and goes outside of its box for some reason? Is that relevant to solving puzzles? Or a bug? I guess I won't find out since I can't rotate pieces to progress further ....
But it’s pretty clear and obvious (to a reasonable person) how the game works and you seem to want to just brag about how you’re clearly a better thinker and smarter than the game designer.
I don't know the game designer especially but what I actually think is that the system (ie org+people) that produced this puzzle is much smarter than I am. I just don't think the puzzle design is appealing and I gave an impersonal argument to that effect. You have a duty on this side to take comments in good faith. If I give you a factual argument about why I dislike a puzzle you don't just get to accuse me that it's really about intellectual girth.
I'm willing to deal with some trial and error with stuff like that, as long as it's predictable and cause-and-effect is consistent. What I'm not willing to deal with is what I'm seeing in puzzle seven. I have a crossroads with a U-turn to the north and a curve to the south. The ball enters the crossroads from the east and goes south. If I remove the northern U-turn (which the ball hadn't visited and was therefore useless), the ball now goes north (and into the void) instead of south to safety.
Then you have the obnoxiously loud music that can't be turned off separately from the sound effects (so you either have annoying music or no audio feedback at all), a condescending "keep trying" popup that treats every test as a failed attempt, slow animations that make for an annoyingly slow feedback loop on trying new things...
It's a really cool concept, fun presentation, but execution is all sorts of terrible. You could easily run a game design masterclass centered on fixing this thing.
- You have to use all the tiles.
- The ball must visit every part of every tile.
- The finished layout must look elegant.
Just assume that there is no goal other than closing all the paths. A tile that connects to empty space means you're wrong. A tile that connects to another tile means you're right. Any and all other "rules" will be changed as necessary to ensure that, if a solution is pretty, it's also correct.
* all the tiles are used: yes
* every part of every tile visited: no. bottom right tile is not visited at all; the dangling path of the three-way tile is not visited
* elegant: no. Dangling paths.
really that makes no sense, physically or in the universe of the game :)
Maybe it's a tie-in to their presentation - perhaps they have a new model like Sora which has a poor understanding of physics. (This would explain why the ball starts flat and ends going uphill as well.)
Broadly, this criticism applies to nearly all UX.
Still a waste of time and money, though.
Small Google games are often actually really decent, especially in comparison to this, so I think that's where some of the disappointment comes from. The Doodle Champion Island one was my favorite.
But also, in this be situation there isn't much positive to be said about the game. Everything about it is badly done. I'm fairly sure the criticisms (vague and badly communicated rules, clunky UI, graphics style that doesn't fit the puzzle, announcing music without a separate music control, way too many slow animations in the wrong places, browser compatibility issues) would be the same if this was a Show HN.
It's just that none of it is being given as constructive feedback. But even that makes sense: unlike for a Show HN nobody will be applying the feedback to fix the game.
(What I don't get is how this is so high on the frontpage, unless it's just for the schadenfreude.)
Interestingly, this appears to be completely intentional; the 2023 puzzles have the same problems.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Had the same "problem" too. I would expect better from an adtech/software firm.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen a page fingerprint me using private mode and tell me about it
I wonder how do they detect it, maybe there is no LocalStorage on incognito mode, but TBH it should not be visible to a webpage
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2909367/can-you-determin...
Unfortunate my company already declined my request for Google I/O :(
"THREE.WebGLRenderer: A WebGL context could not be created. Reason: WebGL creation failed: * tryNativeGL (FEATURE_FAILURE_CGL_FBO) * Exhausted GL driver options. (FEATURE_FAILURE_WEBGL_EXHAUSTED_DRIVERS)"
Any tips? Are there magical flags that should be set somewhere?
The later levels are really tough!
The winning move might be to not play, tbh. It was by far my least favorite level.