New games: Ninjas and Pandas! 🥷🐼
Welcome to Puzzle Express 2.2! This update brings two new games and miscellaneous improvements.
Ninjas and pandas have something common in real life - they prefer to be alone. In these games too! A bit ironic that they joined Puzzle Express together... they will both be on Daily on October 1.
🥷 Ninjas
More commonly known as “shapeless Star Battle”, place ninjas so that:
- No two ninjas touch, even diagonally
- In Easy and Medium, each row and column has exactly one ninja
- In Hard and Very Hard, each row and column has exactly two ninjas
🐼 Pandas
Pair every bamboo with its own panda and make every panda happy. By make them happy, I mean:
- Pandas cannot touch, even diagonally
- Pandas want to be on the left, right, above, or bottom of a bamboo. No diagonals.
- You must follow the count required per row and column
💬 Retiring Mosaic
Sometimes Mosaic is ok, sometimes it's brutally tedious. I can finish three of my dailies in 8 minutes and Mosaic would add 22. I think it's time to admit that it's failed game design.
I've never been happy with how I implemented it. The controls are clunky and unclear: new players miss the flip action because its button looks like an indicator, and press and hold isn't obvious. The 2D board also misses much of what makes the physical puzzle enjoyable. It's more frustrating than satisfying.
Mosaic is leaving daily and feed. It will remain in Arcade if you still enjoy it.
⚙️ Other changes
- Improved game grids design and rendering
- Beehive: Added bee and hive hexes
- Circuit: Improved design
- Gems: Improved design and fixed undo behavior when making mistakes
- Spider: Improved performance