General Help Do you use tricks when you play?

My personal tastes? If I haven't won a game, whether video / computer, a physical race, or a board game with others, without resorting to a shortcut or trick to get around the intended rules and procedures, then I haven't really won it. The same goes for steroid use, because if you have to take a drug to do better than someone who didn't use the same treatment, then you didn't win, the treatment did.

Others can have a different opinion on it, and I'm okay with that. I'm speaking purely for myself and whether I feel I accomplished something, or not, by getting around the rules. Some people like getting to the finish line no matter how they do it. It doesn't really affect me if it's in a small, one-person game.

 

I surely do, though I also make sure I could figure out the intended solution for levels that seem worth playing. Boogie bot / Tripping on Air are the two tricks I only use as a last resort -- especially since they don't require very specific block arrangements to be performed, the creator could easily overlook shortcuts like these (so I don't think it's the creator's responsibility to prevent them).

 

@D.S.Masters As for @richardfu_ 's material I find the tricks mostly intuitive by design, since he usually presents them in a relatively straightforward way. I'd like to think that @retrograde 's levels are much more cryptic (even when based on the very same tricks)

 

"shortcut", "cheat"... These are such unnecessarily negative ways to describe a solution. As if there are Solution Police, ready to pounce on any lateral thinker who refuses to conform to their preconceived ideas of what is intended.

For me, the best puzzles have more than one solution. Sometimes it's difficult to tell which one of several solutions is the intended one (like @explorer's clever sharp corners puzzle). And that's great! All solutions that are achievable within the confines of the game are valid, in my opinion... Whether or not the designer intends for there to be multiple solutions to his puzzle.

Each solution, intended / alternative / shortcut, is a source of enjoyment when mastered. And therefore it is to the credit of the designer if his challenge supports multiple solutions. He loses nothing. Why should he fret or frown if a player finds a different path? Let him rejoice!

At least he will have learned something, and his experience will be the richer for it.

 

I fear when people first finish the original levels, and try their first community levels, scanned levels that rely on moves not required for the original suite of levels (or perhaps intended to be possible at all) are extremely frustrating and can be a real turn-off. (I'm experiencing this myself right now, and I am sure I am not alone.) Is there a tag of some sort for levels that can be solved using only "classic" moves, nothing beyond those needed to solve the original levels, or for levels that can't be solved without resorting to special moves?

 

I love to use tricks when I’m playing or making levels, so I used them.

 

I add some tricks in my levels, but I will not let the players know until they ask. Also, I think ‘clean’ levels can have tricks too.

 

The main issue is not knowing if a trick is the intended solution or not.

There are a few levels I have done where I have accidentally triggered the exit with a dragable Block. If I can see what looks like a ‘normal’ solution with the robots I will play again otherwise I move on.

Most of the levels I have done by Jarvis seem to need the draggable blocks unless I am completely missing something

 

Me too