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I would recommend this game for a child 7-15 as a fun way to start learning to program. Maybe older if you are not already a programmer.
It was still kind of fun to go through, with cute animations like World of Goo, just don't expect any kind of challenge if you decide to spend the time doing it.
So I'd say that it's quite a hard game for people looking to go into programming really efficiently the puzzles. It forced me to go read a little bit of documentation. I really had to learn my sorting algorithms again (because here just trusting your computer to use the right one when you call the "sort" function does not work anymore ;) ).
I've been using assembly when I was 14/16-yo but nowadays I no longer program such low-level tools, and I must say the game made me rethink a lot of what I thought I knew very well. For example destructured programming (using gotos) IS efficient. But it's a mess :D
That's the thing, all of the games mentioned previously ARE optimization puzzlers as well. And I'm really at a loss to recommend this even for a newbie, because the newer LogicBox has some programming features that I've never found elsewhere that got rid of many of the problems even found in TIS-100, for example (instant feedback, levels are usable in future levels, etc). It's not as difficult as TIS-100 and it's also not as 'relatively easy' as HRM, but it's the one that impressed me the most.
Did you really go into optimizing all the puzzles ? Because some of them are really challenging even for very experienced programmers (I think I am one, and I got my ass kicked by several puzzles).
It's my first time with a programming game. I've always programmed "for fun", but not in a gamified way like that. I wanted to try it because I loved World of Goo and I liked what the preview videos showed about it. Fact is I really enjoyed it. It might not be the best, but Its music is cool, its setting is cool and it is quite cheap even if it's just out (even cheaper on another platform for us europeans if I may...).
Unless do don't remember what a finobacci and few other stuffs, you might have no problem in the levels the game offers you(particulally if you ever programmed algorithms for searching, sorting and pattern matching)
Optimisation however will give you some serious headaches as it dit to me |=S
For the super experts here, would you have any interest in a second campaign of extremely difficult levels? We're considering possibly adding a second elevator - a Red Elevator - and curious to hear feedback / clever ideas / would you even care? / etc from the more hard core folks like who seem to be in this thread.
I didn't optimize them all, but I probably hit at least one of optimization challenges the first time through in 90% of the levels (usually hitting speed over instruction count). To be fair, I am a professional programmer, and I like to think a pretty good one at that. I enjoy these types of games, and have spent time optimizing similar puzzles in other games TIS-100, so I have that going for me as well. One of my levels is even included in the bonus campain for TIS-100.
To kylegabler:
I would be somewhat interested in seeing what challenges you can dish out, but it's okay to me/makes sense if the focus for you is elsewhere. I do think this is a good game for the right audience. I am sure that even to many people who have done some programming, things like sorting the list and prime factorization would be really hard.
If you really wanted to give much harder puzzles in the game, I would think about three different issues to solve:
* The tools in the game for copy / pasting functionality, and seeing what you wrote, undo/ redo, make it difficult to manage larger programs. Jumps can especially get messy when only 10 or so lines of code show up at once.
* If the puzzles were of appropriate difficulty for me, a linear elevator is a bad idea. I am used to spending 3-5 hours maybe on a harder puzzle in a game like TIS-100 / Spacechem. It's easy to feel blocked and want to spend some time looking at other puzzles. I completed every puzzle in this game in less time than even 1 of the hard puzzles in those games.
* The instructions right now seem like what I would choose to teach programming, and while sufficient and well choosen for the game thus far, are not really exciting or all that interesting.
One way that might be interesting would be to add extra instructions that operate on neighboring tiles, and then use limited floorspace and even interesting shapes to increase difficulty. Something like, sum a row, or count the number or unique numbers on the floor.
Having developers reading this thread is nice :)
Of course "harder" levels would be nice. I'm not used to "computing" games but I like puzzle games and for example I greatly enjoyed Road to Gehenna as an add-on to The Talos Principle.
In HRM I tried to do linked list in one of the puzzles to see if it would allow for easier sorting during insertion. It did not work because the puzzle lacked "memory space" but it was fun to try. Some puzzle around that concept could be made (there is one, but we just have to iterate, not insert elements & create the list).
Speaking of memory space I think that memory optimization could be a good add-on. It's quite important and challenging. And if you want to go even further you could introduce different memories. Adding to the floor some notion of cost (to symbolize processor caches / RAM / hard drives...).
Another interesting part of computing is concurrency of course. There is no concurrency involved in HRM, and it might be difficult to include, but it would be the starting point of very complex puzzles.
Same with multiple inputs/outputs. Or volatile inputs (time ? temperature ?).
Finally if I were to challenge you to include the most unbelievable feature of all that would be to include quantum computing, with qbits and superposition of states ;-)
Edit :
More ideas of improvement (and more in touch with your intended audience) :
- several programs for each puzzle (at least one for each optimization challenge)
- writing comments and labels with keyboard
- a board of the best Internet optimizations
- a level editor ! (including the ability to give the validation tests, and publishing the puzzles for anyone to play)
Histrion: Hah, you should have played my Talos custom map when you had the chance. Now it's borked. And there are already several 'programs' for each puzzle, use the tab system above the name of the level.
I agree about using limitations for puzzles. We never got a puzzle that took advantage of the more unconventional parts of the language like constraining variables. Edit: I disagree with concurrency though - it's hardly relevant at the first stages of coding for a newbie and makes the player have to go through the debug system again and again, which worsens the "debug brute force" problem I said earlier.
kylegabler: I think the Red Elevator should be unlocked sooner, as well: Level 10 (I think that's near the transition to blue levels) instead of completion of the Green Elevator. Right now, the challenge branches are to me, "harder but still feasible" instead of "very much harderer". Are you open to the unique ideas said above?