Show HN: Unflip – a puzzle game about XOR patterns of squares (unflipgame.com)

Very nice and satisfying, but I would suggest ramping up the difficulty a little faster. I got until lvl 15 by just flipping the obvious areas, taking no more than 2 seconds. It's otherwise very cool and minimalist.

Edit: limiting it to square flips was a great idea. There are just enough moves to make the answer non-obvious (after lvl 15), but not so many possible moves that you get overwhelmed.

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Edit 2: I just remembered I made a similar "game"[1], where you select columns to XOR with other columns and try to reach the target pattern. Use the scroll wheel and shift+wheel to change the pattern and size.

That was actually part of a real research project in optimizing circuits for computing binary finite fields, where the "game" was a sandbox to try different algorithms. The best algorithm was actually found by someone playing in this sandbox and coming up with an efficient strategy.

[1] https://boppreh.com/source/playreduce/

Love it. The “par” value is a huge hint. You might consider hiding it

I agree the ramp up is a bit slow, but I love the concept, and the interface. I am stuck at level 26

edit: found a way to solve it in 6, but not in 4

Level 24. I took a natural approach (pull each corner to the center) and got a rather unfortunate picture

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Edit: and the right answer was so obvious, too

Played until 27. All the levels were pretty easy, 15-30 seconds per level. Mainly because of the "par" feature

Stopped at 74 but managed to par all before that somehow. Didn't really do any problem solving/deep thinking about it, just clicking what felt right

Neumorphic knot, a puzzle about Knot patterns: https://brainteaser.top/knot/index.html

I like it. Played a bunch of levels. I could feel my brain learning new patterns (like the card game Set). There are a handful of really useful primitives.

Had a lot of fun with this, great job on the concept and presentation!

Really nice concept and super clean execution. Wish I’d had 1/2 this restraint on adding complexity when I made my own tile-based puzzle game[0]

[0] https://www.hidden-mirrors.com

I really love how the first few levels teach you about various solving elements and patterns. very well done.

Android gestures need to be prevented in order for the game to work on mobile (drag finger from right to left go back). Nice game thought.

Nice job. I'm reminded of the "Lights Out" game [1].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_Out_(game)

Did I just get flipped in level 13? I really like it, the level progression feels good. Very nice execution.

Level 60 is a fun one

Wow... 120 levels... that was hard. I kept getting down to 1 square, and that always stumps me.

If anyone wants an extra challenge: think, how would you write a solver for this?

i have a strong quibble about calling this XOR. XOR takes two arguments and one of the arguments here is implicit. The game inverts the square colors, which XORing with "1" will do, but it's not defined whether white or black is 1, it just inverts white and black.

If you're into retrocomputing, the C64 game Quadromania (1987) has similar gameplay:

https://archive.org/details/Quadromania_1987_CP_Verlag_de-en...

This was incredibly easy and then it suddenly got incredibly hard

It’s amazing. It inspired some new ideas.

Great game, thanks for sharing. Would love to have a daily level.

The game is quite fun. But it seems the difficulty ramp quite late? It's not very difficult to get the answer with least step by solve the side first until about last 20 levels.

Also, the game does give you a hint about how to bruteforce the level if you only have one square left. Good job.

ASMR FTW

Well done!