I'm going to try to review the games in the general order they are unlocked in the game -- but as you have a lot of freedom in what you do, it's not going to be the only order possible.
Cave Maze Puzzle
The first puzzle you recieve.
A tiled maze. You have two rotations to create a complete path from the start to the finish. You complete the puzzle by dragging the character through your path.
I don't think this puzzle is very relevant to what we want to do.
Coin Puzzle
You are presented with a scale and a set of coins (the number of coins increases with the level of difficulty). You also have a number of times you may use the scale. Within that 'timeframe', you need to determine which coin is a different weight than all of the others, and whether it is heavier or lighter.
Initial difficulties give a chart that keeps track of all the information, partway through the chart will only list "good" or "bad" coins, but not the weight of the bad one, and the hardest difficulties remove the chart altogether.
This game has a good logical progression of information, and really ends up testing deductive reasoning. Not enough weighings are given to allow a trial-and-error approach to the puzzle.
Bees Puzzle
The character stands in the center of the screen with directional coordinates around him. There is a swarm of bees flying around which the character must hit with globs of honey. The character throws the honey in a coordinate direction that the player inputs.
Harder difficulties increase the number of bees and remove visual cues of the coordinates.
Again, I don't really feel this game suits our purposes, but it still has a good progression of difficulty.
Hexagon Puzzle
The player is presented with a hex-map where each hexagon has a number associated with it. The character starts on a "safe" number and has to cross from one side of the map to the other. The numbers follow a pattern including (but not limited to):
- multiples
- perfect squares
- fibonacci sequences starting with x and y
- linear progression
- prime numbers
- numbers that have a remainer of x when divided by y
Harder difficulties decrease the amount of wrong choices you can make.
This game taught me all about fibonacci numbers when I was younger. I could spot fibonacci sequences like nobody's business. It is really good at teaching people to recognize patterns -- but only the patterns that they have (and the remainder business is surprisingly tough to get)
Puzzle puzzle
The player tries to unscramble phrases and enters them once they are legible enough. I remember this game being really easy because there were only a small number of phrases, and even scrambled you could figure out what they were. This game taught me how to properly spell "medicine", but that's about all I got out of it.
This is definitely not the sort of thing we want to do -- it also seems to be broken now, it doesn't work on either of my machines anymore.
Mask Puzzle
There is a mask on a grid system with some of the pieces displaced. The player controls little black and qhite robots by entering simple commands like "white, north 3, west 3, black, south 2, east 1, 6" with symbol beads. The player has a number of "runs" to finish putting the mask back together.
Harder difficulties add special squares that teleport the robots around or complete parts of the puzzle (trial-and-error is required to figure out what to activate and what to avoid) and allow fewer runs.
I think this is a good game -- it definitely requires some planning
Fishing Puzzle
This game is a lot like the bee puzzle, except that there is now also a distance involved. It requires a lot of trial and error to figure out distances and coordinates, and harder difficulties again remove some of the aids. Mistakes are 'rewarded' with garbage (old tires, rusty cans) that are discarded, correct angles and distances are rewarded with fish.
In later difficulties, a shark is added which is something that you can catch, but need to avoid.
I would put this in the same category as the bee puzzle, except that I like it better. It still doesn't suit our purposes, but the progrssion is good.
Spider Maze Puzzle
A bigger version of the Cave puzzle with one more rotation. 16x16 grid instead of 8x8.
Poison Puzzle
A game to teach about fractions and adding fractions. There are 5 zones on the map where you can get different items:
- berries = 1/4 -- a turtle swims across a waterfall. You can pick up various numbers pf falling berries, sometimes too many
- flower petals = 1/5 -- there are 5 flowers and four bees. The bees move randomly. You can only collect from the flower without the bee on it
- jade = 1/6 -- the jade stream has many types of rocks in it. There is only one 'correct' type of jade that you need to pick out from the other rocks
- spider legs = 1/8 -- the spider cave has one spider. He moves quickly until he has three legs left, then he's really slow. If you pick all his legs, he dies (my sound doesn't work anymore, he used to make this cute "bleeeeeeeeeeeeh"). This is not repeatable. If you pick all the legs, overfill your container and lose them, you can't get the spider back without restarting
- seeds = 1/9 -- the seed tree is like an immobile spider. Once all nine seeds are picked, you can't get anymore
The first levels ask for a fraction and a type: "1/2 jar of spider legs"; "2/5 jar of petals"
The next levels ask for a simple fraction: "4/5 jar of anything"; "1/2 jar of anything"
For the second example, 1 petal and 2 spider legs work just as well as 3 jade
The next levels don't reduce the fraction: "6/8 jar of anything"; "4/12 jar of anything"
Earlier levels will turn the total into the full fraction, later ones leave it in the simplest form
The last levels need more complex reasoning: "13/15 jar of anything"; "5/18 jr of anything"
These often require advanced handling: "13/15 = 26/30 so I need 1/5 and 4/6"
This game has a really good progression of difficulty, preparing a player for the harder levels with the easier ones -- teaching them about creating the more difficult fractions with whats avaliable.
Paddy Puzzle
The player must connect rice paddies with water. Each ditch has a value, and the player most dig ditches to have everything connected under a target value. This teaches players about minimum spanning trees in graphs.
Harder difficulties add more edges.
This is a really simple and intuitive way to approach a much harder problem. I think that playing this game when I was younger has helped me pick up some of the concepts in my algorithms course easier.
Shrine Puzzle
The player must guide the character to four shrines then return to the start. Again, each edge is weighted, and the player must complete the puzzle with minimum weight. Again, this really helps with graph problems, and presents the Travelling Salesman in with a very small map.
Harder difficulties add more edges.
My analysis of this is again like the paddy puzzle.
Key Puzzle
This is a more complex version of the Mask Puzzle. Each robot now has its own string instead of a code, so they can move in unison. Some displaced blocks are now two-by-two and need both robots working together to move. A "wait" symbol has been added.
Higher difficulties again add special tiles and give fewer runs to complete the puzzle.
My analysis of this is the same as for the Mask Puzzle.
Logic Puzzle
My version is still buggy, so I can only play the first couple of difficulties.
The game presents two signs ("this door leads to a passage"; "this sign is not false") and a rule ("Both signs are true"; "Either both signs are true or both signs are false").
The player must first use the rule to decide if signs are true or false, and then click on the door with the passage.
I wish my copy wasn't buggy! This is a great mini-logic game.
Logic Puzzle 2
This is the same as Logic Puzzle, only now there are 3 doors. The signs are update to include more complex statements ("this door leads to a pit and door 2 leads to a pit"; "This door leads to a passage or door 1 leads to a pit")
Gears Puzzle
This game offers both a "playpen" part and a "challenge" part. There are two types gears, an outer gear and an inner gear. All of the outer gears are larger than the inner ones. The challenge presents a design and asks the player to find the gears that would make that design (if the inner gear was set inside the outer and made to spin around with a pencil on it).
I like that this game just lets you play with different sizes of gear. Again, my copy doesn't work very well -- it dies after the third game. I really like having the chance to experiment before you have to answer a question about the gears.
Stepping Stone Puzzle
The player must direct the character to stepping stones to get from one side of a river to the other. The stones all have relative positions with positive coordinates moving the character up or right on the grid and negative coordinates moving the character down or left. If the player takes too long, an alligator appears and swims after the player.
Harder difficulties remove the reference grid and add other stone types (like lily pads, which occasionally move around)
Strife
This is the final game. Throughout Phoenix Quest you can collect "Strife Cards" that are characters, equipment, or actions. Before the game you must pick 4 characters from your deck, and up to 40 cards from equipment and actions. Each character has their special action and two values, stamina and karma. Items and character actions are cost 1, and actions are cost 2 -- you have 3 points you can use in a round. The purpose of the game is to get all of your characters to max karma, or drop all of your opponents characters to below min stamina. When a character is below min stamina it is killed, and cannot be used to take actions.
Some actions can only be taken by characters in a certain karma/stamina range, this is shown on the card.
This is a very complex game, and probably of a different genre than we would want to make. It is still rather enjoyable, though.
Relevant link: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/nest/egems/phoenixquest.html
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