This game is amazing [Skull House spoilers]

[BARON VON JEFF]

I've been playing this game for about a week and a half now, about 40 hours in. Only on Deep Forest. I've generally been playing the levels and worlds in order without skipping, and I refuse to look up any hints whatsoever. Needless to say, my progress in the game ground to a halt and I've been stuck on the last few levels in the Forest for about five days now, one of the most notorious being Skull House.

Every so often I'd boot up the game and stare at this level for a long time, proclaiming that it was impossible to solve. Tonight I was messing around in it, rearranging text blocks, and I suddenly got an idea. It was something so simple that I'd never thought of before, but I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Of course I tried it out and it worked, level solved!

I've read some people grumbling that the solution feels cheap or breaks previously established rules taught to the player, but I disagree. I think it keeps all rules intact if you understand the semantics of how the game works, and offers another example of the brilliant creativity not only contained in this game, but the creativity required to beat it.

I can't describe to you the joy and satisfaction of figuring this level out, something I rarely experience in gaming anymore. So I'd just like to say thanks to the devs for making such a wonderful game. It's a total thrill to play :)

[rumpelstiltskin]

there are less radical and game-breaking solutions that use a similar approach (activating "key is rock" and pushing the key into the door in one move), but they don't work. so no, simultaneous resolution is not a consistent mechanic, since in some cases it works (literally only this one case, i suspect) and in other it doesn't. the game repeatedly teaches you that everything is sequential based on priorities, so in case when priorities seemingly are the same, the behavior is not defined. when two blocks move into the same square, for instance, there's no obvious priority, but the game still assigns some, and it doesn't result in 2 blocks in one place.

[Hatless]

I gotta agree that the Skull House solution isn't great. It feels like a ultra special-case rule that was engineered into the game for this one level. It isn't hinted at before or built on after. It's just a weird hardcoded anomaly, and not in a good way.

[Balos]

For what it's worth there are other interactions that I feel are consistent with this one, and people seem to be okay with. Movement might not be simultaneous but rules are.

Examples:
"X has A and B" makes something drop multiple things when it dies (would skull house be more intuitive if it was phrased "A is B and C"?)
X is All makes something transform into multiple objects.

[rumpelstiltskin]

AND is obviously a different thing. it always means "at the same time", even when it's used for verbs, and it's always one rule/one sentence.

[Balos]

Originally posted by rumpelstiltskin:

AND is obviously a different thing. it always means "at the same time", even when it's used for verbs, and it's always one rule/one sentence.

Try opening the menu when playing a level with AND to see the full list of active rules.

The game interprets "A is B and C" as two separate rules "A is B" and "A is C".

Logically there is no difference.

[rumpelstiltskin]

i don't see how it makes a difference, it's just implementation details. the consistency should be in the rules as they are formulated by the player, not how they work internally.

[Hatless]

I don't agree the 'skull house rule' is consistent. If you make 'X is X' and 'X is Y' each X doesn't becomes an X and Y -- the second rule is overridden and crossed out. That's one of the first things you learn when starting the game and it applies universally. Except in this one case in this one stage, which is nuts.

(The _other_ issue with Skull House is that you don't know what kind of puzzle you're solving in advance. I spent at least as much time trying to make something magic happen by pushing words over the moat as I did trying to make something magic happen by rearranging rules. When your only guide is 'try everything', everything is a lot!)

[Mar Hepto]

Originally posted by Hatless:

I don't agree the 'skull house rule' is consistent. If you make 'X is X' and 'X is Y' each X doesn't becomes an X and Y -- the second rule is overridden and crossed out. That's one of the first things you learn when starting the game and it applies universally. Except in this one case in this one stage, which is nuts.

(The _other_ issue with Skull House is that you don't know what kind of puzzle you're solving in advance. I spent at least as much time trying to make something magic happen by pushing words over the moat as I did trying to make something magic happen by rearranging rules. When your only guide is 'try everything', everything is a lot!)

I agree with this, and I remember writing a post about it before. Sure, the case "X is Y, X is Z" is technically different from "X is X, X is Y", but that's a very big technicality. It's the only puzzle in the entire game I actively dislike, because it doesn't feel consistent with previously-established rules.

[BARON VON JEFF]

The solution to Skull House is not hardcoded, and it's not unique to this stage only. It's a universal rule that is present in the entire game; it just took most of us until Skull House to discover it. Would it blow your mind to know that this rule can be done in the very first level in the game? Go ahead, try it. Actually, it can be done in tons of levels, most of them early in the game before the levels start getting highly specific. Remember, this game doesn't teach you anything. You discover the rules from experimenting with what you have available. In the sixth level, Volcano, did the game tell you if you take the same object that's "Hot" ("Lava") and make it "Melt" as well, that it will destroy itself? No; you discovered that was possible through experimentation. Or maybe you turned the "Lava" into "Baba" and discovered that you could control many of the same object simultaneously. Personally, I made "Lava Is Push" and discovered that even though "Lava Is Hot" and "Baba Is Melt", it didn't destroy me when I touched it because I would only be destroyed if I moved onto a lava tile, and the push function makes the lava move with me instead of me landing on it. Again, the game never explicitly states this; I inferred this as the result of my experimentation. So why is experimenting and discovering that you can turn an object into two different objects any different from anything else you've discovered in the game? Skull House forces you to discover this if you haven't already, just like Lake-8 Locked In forced me to discover I could turn an object into a different object, which I hadn't yet realized.

To address the issue of the game teaching you "X is X" so "X can't be Y", keep in mind that the game only demonstrates that if "Object Is [same]Object", "[same]Object" can't be "[other]Object" (with the understanding that if "Baba Is Baba", for example, that rule supersedes "Baba Is... [any other object]"); it does not state that "Object X" can't be "Object Z" if "Object X Is Object Y". Because which rule would supersede the other? If you enact both rules at the same time (like in Skull House), there's no precedent in that scenario to decide which rule will be activated and which one will be ignored, so both must be activated. The "X is X" rule superseding anything else would actually be an example of hardcoding. Remember that you can discover the simultaneous "X is Y" and "X is Z" trick in the first level and long before the game shows you the "X is X" superseding rule. I got into fine semantics here, so hopefully you can understand what I wrote. I'd also add that turning one object into two at the same time is a completely different scenario than trying to turn one object into another while a rule saying you can't is present.

In terms of trying to push the key into the door on the same turn as transforming the key into something else, I came up with the exact same idea on Skull House and tried it. It doesn't work, but it makes sense why. When you push an object, before anything moves, the game checks what's on the grid square to the other side of the object. This is because if there's a wall tile that's set to "Stop" on the other side of the key you're trying to push, for example, the key can't be pushed. That's why the game makes this check first. However, the resulting changes to the rules or objects from moving onto an available tile is only checked after the move is complete; when you try to push a text tile or object onto a different square, the game is only concerned whether you can or not, and if you can, then it determines what changes happen, if any, once the move is complete. The game could have been programmed so that when you push an "Open" key into a "Shut" door, the key actually moves to the door tile before both objects are destroyed (in which case your open-the-door-and-change-key-into-something-else trick would have worked), but the developers decided to make both objects destroy themselves on the first check, making the key nonexistent by the time the game checks your new key transform rule. This is consistent with the game's established rules, and you'll have already noticed this before Skull House if you were paying attention to a level like Ghost Guard where the ghost is "Shut" and "Push" and "Has Flag", and the key is "Open". When you push the ghost into the key, you might expect that they would disappear once the ghost moves onto the key tile, and that the flag would be waiting for you on that same tile. But just like pushing "Open" keys into "Shut" doors have long since taught you, the ghost and key disappear as soon as you push and the flag drops on the ghost's tile, leaving you to automatically collect it and win as soon as you push, because Baba still has to move after the game made the check for the ghost and key to disappear and the flag to drop. I'm not saying the game's rules can't be confusing to players in cases like this, and maybe that's a problem, but I am saying Skull House is completely consistent with the game's rules.

I think solving Skull House was so satisfying to me because I understood why the solution worked and why my failed attempts didn't, and because the solution had been right under my nose the whole game, waiting to be discovered.

[rumpelstiltskin]

X is X being "same object" is exactly special-casing, since ideally left and right parts of the formula should be agnostic of each other. one can say that in this case X is X supersedes subsequent X is Y's because it was introduced first, but no, for A is B, A is C it doesn't apply, i.e. one can be added after the other and still both be active.
fair point about why key pushing doesn't work, but it's really just an implementation detail. yes, you can probably figure out how it's implemented, but it's not different from just saying "here we have a priority list and things are executed in this order" (like with push/stop/tele). simultaneity feels very alien to how the rest of the game works.

[Shashakiro]

I've posted my agreement that I don't really like Skull House as a level, but I'll add that I absolutely don't think that the "A IS A" behavior undermines it at all. To me, it was always obvious that "A IS A" was a special case of "[Object] is [Object]" because it creates this special "X" graphic unique to rules that solely prevent the effects of other rules. The game teaches quite well, in my view, the fact that the rule "A IS A" means "Object A cannot be changed into any other object" and means only that.

My issue with Skull House is that (directly contrary to OP) I just don't think it's very clever. It feels more like a level about stumbling on a weird edge case than solving an interesting problem. I don't think it's awful, just kind of meh.

At the very least it should be promoted to an "extra" level; it is definitely much too hard/weird to be a main level, I think.

[rumpelstiltskin]

from the "common sense" perspective yes, A is A looks like a special case. but if you interpret the rules from the standpoint of formal rules/algorithms, then there's no reason for it to be. besides, we are taught that with an object on the right hand side, "is" is not a "constatation of fact", it's an act of transformation. so yes, A is transformed into A each step, you just can't see it.

[Senlin]

Ok, A is transformed into A on each step, that's fine. Why it can't be simultanously transformed into B? That's what's happening in the skull house level, it is transformed into 2 different objects at the same time..

Also, can someone confirm that A is B and C actually works? A is B and A does not work (it produces a rule with B being crossed out in the middle, which looks quite weird).

[Shashakiro]

Originally posted by rumpelstiltskin:

besides, we are taught that with an object on the right hand side, "is" is not a "constatation of fact", it's an act of transformation. so yes, A is transformed into A each step, you just can't see it.

Well, perhaps that's what you learned, but you learned something false. It *is* a special case. That is exactly why simultaneous 'A IS A' and 'A IS B' produces only an A, while simultaneous 'A IS B' and 'A IS C' produces both B and C. You're treating the latter as the "special" case, but in the game, the former is the special case. It could have worked the way you described, but it just doesn't; 'A IS A' is a rule canceler and not a transformation.

If the "transform into itself on every step" interpretation were correct, 'A IS A' with A IS B' would function much like 'A MAKE B'. That it does not refutes that interpretation pretty conclusively.

froz: Yes, A IS B AND C works the same as the Skull House mechanic.

[rumpelstiltskin]

of course it *is* a special case. the question is, why was it necessary? why add special cases at all? why have a rule that's highly questionable and is needed on a single level, which most people disliked, and on top of that has a game-breaking potential on all other levels (that the dev must spend time and effort to check against)