Show HN: Corral – A Visual Logic Puzzle About Enclosing Numbers(mohammed321.github.io)
26 pointsby MohammadAbuG7 days ago11 comments
  • riffraff7 days ago
    I'm on mobile, I clicked through and I had no idea of what I'm supposed to do. Perhaps there's a tutorial that's expected to be shown and wasn't, if not, I'd suggest you add one, the linkedin games ones have usually good ones to use as inspiration.

    Otherwise, an "hint" button is always a good idea to help with frustration.

    Edit: once I finally understood the rules, it's a pretty nice game!

    • MohammadAbuG6 days ago
      I should add a tutorial with images because a lot of people were commenting thats it's not very clear how the game should be played, thanks for not giving up trying to understand it!
      • Gaming83926 days ago
        I tried everything and I still don't understand. Left/right/middle click everywhere, typing numbers on the keyboard, space, enter... What is happening?
        • MohammadAbuG5 days ago
          you start with all the cells being inside the loop you need to click with a mouse left button or touch on the edge tiles of the loop to exclude them, if thats not working then it could be another problem.
  • laurentlb7 days ago
    I agree it's confusing at the beginning, but I think it's much better to figure out the rules on your own. It requires a bit of testing, but it's completely doable.

    I'd add a line below the game, e.g. "Your first goal is to figure out the rules. Click here if you're still confused after a while."

  • rstarast7 days ago
    The interface makes it almost impossible to solve a puzzle in logical steps.

    You might find some inspiration here: https://puzz.link/p?cave/10/10/i44t4g3r3g3j2h2h3zp3q5g32k4 http://pzv.jp/p.html?bag/10/10/i44t4g3r3g3j2h2h3zp3q5g32k4 (from http://blog.livedoor.jp/bachelor_seal-puzzle/archives/901448...)

  • monkeycantype7 days ago
    Ok, I was confused by this, I had vastly overcomplicated what I thought you had to do, confused by the word 'loop'

    the only thing you can do in the puzzle is hide or reveal squares from the edges in.

    your goal is to make sure the number of contiguous square in the shape formed by a given square and the squares up,down,left,right equals the number in the square,

    the red number is just tally letting you know how far you are from your target

    • MohammadAbuG6 days ago
      thank for explaining it better than I could! its a little confusing to describe it with words I should add an image tutorial.
  • lindenr7 days ago
    Really interesting! It does need an explanation - took me a bit of clicking around to discover the rules (which I actually enjoyed because it turned out not to be too complicated! But some will give up early).

    One aspect I liked about the larger puzzle sizes it that the topology becomes nontrivial: you can work out for sure that a cell has to be marked without knowing the exact path from the edge inwards, which you later narrow down.

    Feature request: can interior cells be marked? Right now it's disallowed which helps rule discovery but requires the user to remember more.

    • MohammadAbuG6 days ago
      great suggestion, I need to add a way you can lock cells or flag them like in minesweeper
  • andrelaszlo7 days ago
    Marking/locking cells you're sure about would be a nice addition.
  • albert_e7 days ago
    Can you add a visual tutorial with examples.

    I had no idea what the numbers are. Came back to read your text description above and still only vaguely understand it. Sorry, ESL.

  • IJ927 days ago
    cool puzzle! I like the visual updates, it would be interesting if you'd explain the algorithm used to generate the puzzles.
  • mcphage6 days ago
    It creates puzzles with multiple possible solutions:

    5 6 3 _

    4 _ _ _

    6 7 4 _

    _ 4 _ _

    The bottom right corner can be in the loop, or out of the loop, and both solutions are valid.

    • MohammadAbuG6 days ago
      yes, the solutions are not unique, it would be very hard to make sure the puzzle has a unique solution probably requiring a brute force algorithm, the puzzle itself is NP complete, the way I generate the puzzle is to first create the "loop" with all cells having numbers in them then removing numbers from cells at random.
  • readthenotes17 days ago
    Oh good golly, is that daylight?

    Addictive :)

  • HeavyStorm7 days ago
    This is actually fun!