Headache

You know I understand what a puzzle entails. There are pieces that the player has to put together in just the right way to provide a solution, in the case of Mekorama, a clear path to the win block.

What I am struggling with is the actual process of building a puzzle. It is hard to describe. I can learn how to use paints and brushes, I know what a sky looks like, but even knowing my tools and what I am painting, I still would struggle to paint a sky.

I wonder if there is a word for this. This knowing what to do, understanding what is entailed, yet being unable to actually do it.

But in the end I did (mostly) what I set out to do. Using Level 5 - Level Up as my example, I figured out how to make this sort of slider puzzle. A thank you to Martin Magni for the game, and to richardfu for their Cut In Half levels, which also helped inspire me.

I will learn the puzzle building process, just as I intend to someday masterfully paint the sky.

Nice logic level but I think the result was too easy, isn't it? Thanks!

Looks great and plays nice, but too easy indeed.

Any advice on how I could design this so it would be a more difficult puzzle?

@DreamBliss Add tons of instable ability steps with afwul timing.

Seriously, "pure puzzles" are not my strongest point. It is tempting for a creator to hide things, or to use very weird exploits/tricks, in order to make a level more difficult. But from a players perpective those are not the best options. So the solution should be based on more difficult logic.

@DreamBliss one possible idea could be dividing the draggable component in two different pieces, create some fake paths, ...

Although this was a very easy puzzle, I think it's a success as it was inspired by Level Up of the originals and it feels similar in difficulty.
Now, I think what makes this easy is also that most players in the forum have already won all 50 of the original levels and then dozens, hundreds or thousands (@chemi) of levels in the forum, so of course this feels easy in comparison.
As to what makes good puzzles, I think you're in the right track as it does feel a little like a mix between Level Up and Cut In Half.
A good puzzle, to me, should be thought of backwards from the goal, as what you want is the player to find the solution to a problem, and the problem in Mekorama will always be "how do I reach the win?".
So with that in mind, let's say that you have to push a ball to reach the win, then you have to add another problem that'll be "how do I push that ball?" and so on...
This puzzle in particular, would have been more challenging by only changing B to R (and making a couple of modifications), for example.
I do encourage you to check more creators like @richardfu_ and @Block builder and come up with more puzzles! It's pretty easy to make hard levels by adding zappers and (as BB jokingly suggested) unstable steps or hidden elements, but that's not what makes a level enjoyable and in some cases it can make a level frustrating, but logic puzzles that are challenging never get old! Thanks.

BB chemi and chuckthulhu you guys have great points! I'd been wondering the same type of questions myself.