In an earlier post I introduced movement-until-blocked puzzles. The idea of such puzzles is that there are various objects to be moved towards a goal. Each object can be moved separately, and in any direction possible. However, the catch is that the movement will continue until it is blocked by a wall or another moveable object. In that earlier post and the follow-up I presented six different iPhone puzzles that used this principle. In the meantime two more have become available: Atomix and D-Star. Both are remakes of earlier games known under the same names.
Archive for the ‘Movement-until-blocked’ Category
More movement-until-blocked puzzles
18 March 2009Riddle racing until blocked
11 December 2008
In my previous post I discussed various puzzles that used the principle of “movement-until-blocked” to transform a simple grid into a more or less complex maze. In a comment to that post, Bob Hearn drew my attention to another such puzzle in the app store that I had missed (iTunes link): Riddle Racer (a free version to try it out is also available). The goal of this puzzle is to move the car to the centre of the board with the help of the orange pylons. Both the car and the pylons can be moved, but only if they are blocked at some point by the car or another pylon.
Movement-until-blocked mazes
10 December 2008
A regular maze is good, but a concealed maze is better. By allowing only particular kinds of movements, a simple grid suddenly can become a twisted virtual maze. A recurrent trick is to only allow straight movement that continues until blocked. Various puzzles in the app store use this approach. And to give away my conclusion, I find Q Touch (shown here to the right) currently the most interesting of them.
The following five apps all are this kind of “movement-until-blocked” mazes:
Puzzling iPhone 