Assume the roll of an international safe cracker saving for retirement in the short puzzle game Safe Cracker by Ben James. Each of the 12 safes requires a 5-digit code to open. Guess the code and receive clues as to whether your digits are high or low.
Hi! I'm Bart Bonte, a Belgian independent game designer and bontegames.com is where I blog about new interesting browser and mobile games. My own games are all in the left column (or at the bottom of this page on mobile). More info about me and my games on bartbonte.com.
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20 comments:
This is just a computer version of mastermind.
Quite easy indeed.... kind of master mind, more simple.
Only 4 turns are enough for each code - less if you're lucky
I quite enjoyed this one. Strategy is more important than luck here, but it's still quite tense, especially as there's no in-game backspace.
It would be nice to have some kind of progress bar, etc, to see far through you are. But such is life on a game jam.
$581,600 if anyone is counting.
$435,900 I'll take that :-)
Well this was utterly terrible -- basically a glorified version of a CS class assignment. As others have pointed out, as long as you don't hit a wrong key or anything, winning is trivially easy. I'm really surprised this one is worth mentioning.
If you want the formula...........
Start with 55555.
If you get a + or - go to 7 or 3.
Then go to 9 or 1.
Then you have the answer.
I got $520,000.
I guess I could retire on that.
So long as I never did anything.
"Anonymous C" here. Just want to say thank you to Fitz for the strategy, to Ben James for the entertaining game, and to Bart for sharing it!
It was fun to figure out what the heck is going on during the first level... but once you get the concept, it's pretty repetitive to grind it out
Yeah, if you aren't already familiar with the concept of "split the difference," the first few levels are just to help you figure that out. Once you know it, it's literally impossible to not guess any combination in 4 tries total, because 2^4 is 16 which is more than 9 (the available digits).
Once you figure out a strategy, it's kinda of easy, but I still love a game with a repeatable strategy! It's still fun to compare your past responses and try to work out what numbers fit those parameters. This could be a good game for math teachers to teach less than/greater than!
I played mastermind a lot when I was a kid but this is just too hard or I'm not understanding it at all. After the 4th attempt you stop seeing the 1st one so you lose clues. I didn't even crack the first one and ended up very frustrated.
I get that - means the number doesn't exist, + that the number does exist but in a different place, and the numbers shown are the correct ones?
Sjbfhxbns
I just read the whole thing, Bart... "Guess the code and receive clues as to whether your digits are high or low."
I'm dumb ahahahahaha
Yes, it's easy when you realize that binary search will solve all codes in four or less tries. It's still a clean implementation and the algorithm will be a new and fun discovery for those who haven't seen it before.
@Yu I went through the exact same process! I guessed it was Mastermind-like, with the same interpretation of the + and -, then later actually read the intro.
It's actually pretty monotonous. The lack of a backspace key is literally the only challenging aspect.
@Anonymous, @GISM: I agree that no backspace key creates difficulties. I wonder if that was a design decision or just a side-effect of working with very limited time. I am prone to entering the wrong key, so several times when I knew what the right number to enter was, I ended up typing the wrong one by mistake. That made the lack of a backspace key less of an element of play and more of a simply nuisance. In addition to a backspace key, what else could make this a better game? Maybe "dragging" the clues by averaging adjacent numbers? That is, if the answer is (1,3,4,4), and the player puts in (1,3,4,5), weighted averaging might treat that input as (1.67, 2.75, 4.00, 4.67), the resulting hint would be (-, +, 4, +). Don't know how playable that would be, but it would make the input neighbors affect their neighbors, which might feel slightly more safe-cracky.
Been a gamer since the Commodore Pet, and this gets me right in the heart.
Dull, dull, dull ....
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