The Magic of Science - a browser-based puzzle game I made

[Fortuna]

Hi folks! Over the past while I've been working on a browser-based game about figuring out and applying a set of arcane rules. It's called The Magic of Science (https://themagicofscience.5apps.com/), and it's finally in a state where it's ready for people outside me and my friends to look at it. It's completely free to play, and in principle should be compatible with mobiles as well as all modern browsers - I have had some reports that it doesn't work correctly on mobile, but I can't reproduce them. I'd really appreciate it if you'd take a while to play around with it and give me any feedback you might have. Thanks in advance!

[Eldan]

Nice. I'll go try it and get back to you.

[Eldan]

Okay. First impression is that the interface seems confusing. THere's a lot of buttons and it's not quite clear what is or is not a button. I also, so far, have no idea what anything means. Experiments? Hydration? Gateway? It all seems to be more or less the same puzzle. Are these levels?

[Eldan]

Okay, on the second level now. The puzzle that has taken me the longest so far was "find something to break my fall". I got the rules, I just didn't get what it wanted me to create. Jet of water? No. Jet of wind? No. Barrier of wind? No. Surge of wind? No. I just figured in the end that the triangle probably had to go in the middle, since that was quite clearly what that puzzle wanted me to learn, then I systematically tried every combination of two other stones until I got to the ephemeral water barrier.

[Eldan]

Okay, through the second gateway, the next one that stumped me was wonders of artifice, as I first tried experimenting with two "combine" stones, something like combine-element-combine-element, or element-combine-combine-element, all of which of course do nothing useful. Didn't occur to me to try all three elelements.

[Eldan]

Up to decay now. That gateway in advancement was lovely, that hit exactly the right difficulty to get me thinking for a while.

[Fortuna]

Nice. I'll go try it and get back to you.

Thanks! :smallsmile:


Okay. First impression is that the interface seems confusing. THere's a lot of buttons and it's not quite clear what is or is not a button. I also, so far, have no idea what anything means. Experiments? Hydration? Gateway? It all seems to be more or less the same puzzle. Are these levels?

There is a help button, displayed what I thought was reasonably prominently. Should I force-display the help screen when you initially load the game, do you think?


Okay, on the second level now. The puzzle that has taken me the longest so far was "find something to break my fall". I got the rules, I just didn't get what it wanted me to create. Jet of water? No. Jet of wind? No. Barrier of wind? No. Surge of wind? No. I just figured in the end that the triangle probably had to go in the middle, since that was quite clearly what that puzzle wanted me to learn, then I systematically tried every combination of two other stones until I got to the ephemeral water barrier.

Yeah, I've had comments about that one. That's probably the next thing I'll address.

[Eldan]

Okay, this is hard. At first, I assumed the blue-red symbol was merely a more limited form of the combine symbol, i.e. it can't be anyhwere in the spell and always combines the next two. But I utterly fail to understand what two of it does.

[Eldan]

Almost half an hour of experimentation and the compass rose symbol remains an utter mystery to me. Or rather, I had about five ideas about what it did (doubling the strength of stuff? Limiting how often you can use the same symbol? Switch the meaning of the next two symbols? Ignore the symbol after the next?) but apparently, none of them are true and it does utterly baffling things that i see no logic behind.

I think I?ll go to bed now and have another look tomorrow.

[Eldan]

Okay, so I didn't go to bed. Another half hour, that symbol still eludes me. Nothing makes sense, the world has no logic.

[Fortuna]

Okay, so I didn't go to bed. Another half hour, that symbol still eludes me. Nothing makes sense, the world has no logic.

Oh dear. Evil Star has claimed another victim. I really like that symbol, but there's a leap that no one has yet managed to make on their own - I'll see what I can do about inserting an intermediate symbol or two that leads up to the concepts involved.

[Eldan]

Yes, please. I tried all manner of rules which seemed to make sense. I.e. the star does:

*Move the last symbol in the following spell one back? No, apparently not.
*Change the meaning of the next symbol to the symbol after it? No.
*Switch the meaning of the next two symbols for the rest of the spell? Not quite, but I think close.


It does seem to change the meaning of some symbols, but I'm not entirely sure how.

I did manage to solve three of the puzzles on that last level, by observing a few changes. I'm still just nto sure how.

[Fortuna]

Alright, updated with a new symbol and a small area to demonstrate it. Hopefully that helps.

[Eldan]

It's not working. Tried on two different computers, it's not connecting, just a blank black screen. Cleared the cache and the usual tricks, too.

[Fortuna]

Oops. Forgot to upload the assets for the new symbol. Should be fixed now.