Stuck on Worm / Shuffle

[DR!FTΞR]

Having a real struggle to complete these. Any advice?

Especially shuffle - even if you find 3 working words, it appears they need to be in the correct sequence, despite being correct answers.

Since I'm writing: Rock Runner should save progress, and there should be a way to reset a stage. It's possible to become trapped, and restating isn't fun.

What's the trigger for Cindy's quest?

[TheDeparture]

Yeah, they were both designed to be pretty challenging games. Here are the strategies I've used that work fairly well.

HOGOWORD SHUFFLE

When the game starts, I start by picking the top row and tap the right arrow four times. The total number of blue pegs I get during those four taps generally tells me how many of the four letters in that row belong there. The number will be off slightly if there are duplicate letters in that row's word, but it gives me a good ballpark number to start with.

I then repeat the process with the second row, and then the third row. Whichever row has the most letters that belong there is the row that I'll choose to focus on first.

Now, I replace one letter in that chosen row with a letter from a different row (tapping one of the up or down arrows once). I'll then tap the right arrow four times again & see if the total number of blue pegs has gone up or down. If it went down, I'll bring back the original letter. If it went up, I'll keep the new letter. Then I'll repeat the process with the second, third, and fourth letters in that row.

If, however, swapping in a letter from a different row keeps the total blue peg count the same, then I assume that neither of the two letters belongs in that row. So I'll try swapping in a different letter to that same spot.

Eventually, I'll know which four letters belong in that row, and I can figure out how to rearrange them into a word that gives me four blue pegs. When done, I now have one correct word in its correct row.

So now I pick a second row and repeat the process. Once I have two words solved in their correct rows, the third word is generally easy to figure out because you know it's made out of the four remaining letters. But it's often trickier to get the letters of that final word arranged in place without destroying the other two words. At that point, it's more of a challenge similar to the sliding number puzzle.

HOGOWORM DUNGEON

Because the board is randomly set up each time, some games will be easier to do than others. But there are two tricks that help me.

Early in the game, I try to maneuver the spider so that it gets caught inside the angle of an "L" shape of blocks. Once it's there, I usually have a decent amount of space to move around in to grab coins without the spider being able to get free. Once I've cleared that space of coins, I try to see if I can maneuver the spider to a new "L" and repeat the process.

The second trick becomes useful once your worm starts getting substantially longer. It's a way of safely catching the spider in a crook of your tail, like so:

Let's say your worm's head and the spider are both near each other; the spider is a few blocks to the right of you, and the area immediately above both of you is somewhat clear of blocks & your tail.

Start by going up one or two steps. Before the spider reaches your head, go to the left one step, down one step, then to the left two more steps. The spider should reach your body & be unable to get to your head while you're doing this.

Now, go up two steps. This will create a small cup shape out of your body, which the spider should now go into. If you then go one more step to the left, and then start going back down, the spider will be caught in the cup shape.

As long as you stay underneath the cup, the spider won't be able to get out until your tail catches up to that area of the board. This gives you a great deal of stress-free time to grab up a lot of coins.

I hope this is helpful!

[TheDeparture]

Good point about Rock Runner. It really should at least have a way to restart a level. I'll aim to add something.

Cindy sends you welcome mail at the beginning of the game. Send mail back to her to start her story.

[DR!FTΞR]

Shuffle tips worked, but was only solvable after using your method to confirm what the words needed to be. Quite confusing in its present form...

Once again, trapped in runner, and not looking forward to replaying the early stages all over for the ?th time. https://i.imgur.com/JoWS86j.png

[TheDeparture]

Totally fair. I'll add level persistence for Rock Runner, even if the player exits Hogonet Reader. However, I'll probably still have the levels reset if the player quits the entire Dum-Dum game. This should be a good compromise between those who want to play it casually/occasionally & those who are playing repeatedly in a single sitting to get the achievement.

Hmm...now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I'll also add a Basic Box cheat code that jumps you straight to the final random levels. I can then add a post to the BBS message board in-game describing how to do that.

I'll aim to have this up by tonight or tomorrow morning.

I'll also add Hogoword Shuffle play tips to the "Win At Video Games" book in-game.

[TheDeparture]

I just updated Rock Runner. It now saves your level until you completely quit out of Dum-Dum.

In addition, I added a Basic Box "cheat" command to take you straight to the random levels anytime. See the instructions on the BBS message board.

[DR!FTΞR]

Thanks. Finally finished. Dungeon was a tremendous time sink, but probably because I didn't understand how to design pockets to catch the spider reliably. Took many restarts to find a workable layout.

[Ozium]

man I am struggling hard with hogoword shuffle... I do what the dev said above and what's in the 'how to win at video games' document but still feel like a dum-dum... dungeon I understand and my problem is execution, which will improve w/ practice but i'm totally lost in shuffle lol