Thursday 30 September 2010

Play My Puzzle Game: Linesweeper

Yes you read right... I kinda invented something. "Linesweeper" is not too unlike popular Japanese puzzles except I guess it's not Japanese since I made it (so we I guess we should call it one of those "British Puzzles?") but this is all fluff. I should tell you all how you can play it online and where you can do so.

Linesweeper is hosted on the website of a great guy called Otto Janko, (I've mentioned his excellent site before) and he has kindly made a Javascript applet for what would have otherwise been solely a pen and paper based grid puzzle so you can actually just do it all in your browser right now!

There is a good explanation on the main page on how to solve... but it's in German so unless you want to use a translator to figure out the rules I'll just explain it here.

LINESWEEPER RULES!


1. The object is to create a path through the grid which forms a single closed loop. You can only ever move up, down, left or right (not diagonally).


2. The loop can't cross itself or have a fork in it, just one uninterrupted loop.


3. The numbered cells can't be passed through and tell you exactly how many of the 8 surrounding cells should contain some part of the solution path. (e.g. "0" means the 8 surrounding cells can't be passed through at all).


NB: There is only ever one solution and no guesswork is required.


There are 20 puzzles on the site at the moment and I've already written another 5 personally and perhaps other puzzle authors out there will create their own problems in the future? Watch this space!