I'm *so* close to finishing the final puzzle, I have 11 out of 12 words from what seem to be the final message. But I'm confused on where to go from here? I'm not sure what I have missed to decipher the final word. I've figured out that the bottom right of each page indicates the remaining letters, but what am I to do with the leftovers from page 12 itself once I solve?
Alright, I think I got it, but not sure if I happened to notice it by coincidence or if that is the intended way. Is the intent to see that you have duplicate letters left at the end, and then figure it out that way? I did not do this; I saw the word "won", and traced it backwards since I knew the "N" was the final letter and of course knew the total number of letters I was looking for.
Also, what is the box next to 12th word list on the final page meant for?
Yep the intent is to use the leftovers as a guide for the 12th word, but your way works fine too.
The box is just a little checkbox to mark off to affirm you've gotten the final message, in case you didn't get 144/144 in doing so, or got all 144 but missed the message due to not writing out the list.
Hmmm. The most similar game I can think of is LOCK for PS Dreams. (Although I haven't played it myself, I just watched Keith Ballard's play-through.)
I don't play a lot of word games or puzzle hunts, so everything else that comes to mind is just normal puzzle games with good epiphanies -- Linelith, Öoo, Slicecraft, Pâquerette, Bee Magic, N-Step Steve, Insight, A Monster's Expedition, etc.
In terms of books, ABDEC might be the most similar to 12 WS (consistent rules, fleshed out over time) but it is fiendishly difficult at one point. Oh, and the excel-based puzzle Rainbow Challenge / INTAO 🟥🟧🟨🟩🟦🟪⬛ seemed excellent, though I got stuck halfway through, and it's structured such that the rules change for every puzzle.
I just finished v1.25! Thank you! From my texts with a friend, it took me exactly 30 minutes to figure out I needed “AS” in the final message. Oops! Afterwards I did go watch Icely Puzzles video on your book and I do like the updated 12th :) I like the omega theme too.
Personally I needed 0Rules. I “solved” 1-11 in order without looking at ANY of the meta puzzles. I did mark some palindromes but didn’t make the connection with any metapuzzles. I really had to study the bottom left a-z0-9 on the 0th puzzle to understand how it works for everything else.
Here’s a photo of my completed 12! https://imgur.com/a/NF38UOd
Oh my gosh, thank you! I remember getting Puzzlecraft probably a decade ago now, and getting inspired to make some riddles for my (rather mediocre) 10 Puzzles project. Oh, and coincidentally I just ordered Betrayal a couple days ago -- didn't know you were involved with that until I googled it. Excited to play it this Halloween with my family.
Awesome.
If you liked the old version of Puzzlecraft, there's a new version on our store. https://shop.lonesharkgames.com/collections/puzzlecraft Happy to send you a free PDF if you'd like one.
Cool puzzle book overall! I really like how the the idea of themed word searching works well with word choices and the puzzle designs, especially the visual designs in 8, 9 and 10 and the small jokes in 3 and 6. The letter arrangement in individual puzzles also makes them more solveable, beautiful and interesting, even in pre-0 levels.
The only two puzzles I found less appealing than others are 1 and 11. I personally knew nothing about cookies so the four given words in 1 on the left made me really confused. Even after knowing the theme, I could only do the puzzle by ctrl+F-ing the first letters of hidden words on Wikipedia, which makes it less fun than all other puzzles where I can search for familiar words in the pdf rather than searching for seemingly random words online. In 11, the theme is clear, but although knowing the theme makes searching for most hidden words easy, it helped little in finding "category" and "leftovers", since the themes of 11 and 12 do not directly lead to those two words. The only source of those two words seem to be the wordsearch itself, which is made difficult by the significantly large number of leftover letters. (Also, the titles of 2 and 11 were not helpful because I believed in the word choices "animal" and "theme", which prevented me from reading the titles.)
Other levels are fun! In addition to the jokes and visuals, I like most of the titles, the design of fake dots in 5, the entirety of 6, the good demonstration of the theme in 12 through using the answer of itself as a word searched for.
Hey - I've been having a lot of fun with version 1.25 and have a question to confirm if I'm interpreting puzzle 0 correctly...
[Rot13] Vf Chmmyr 0, gur Ehyrf chmmyr, fhccbfrq gb grnpu gung yrggref pna'g or erhfrq (Yvxr gur B gung vagrefrpgf aBg naq nyyBjrq), be gung jbeqf fubhyqa'g or va n fgenvtug iregvpny/ubevmbagny yvar?
I have been trying to solve Puzzle 2, but I haven't been able to find a way to find/solve... [Rot13] "Ebbfgre" naq "Qentba" jvgubhg er-hfvat gur E. Nevermind, I found a different way to map Ebbfgre and should be set.
Thank you so much for the puzzle/game! I've been having a nice time working on it with my wife.
amazing, amazing, amazing puzzle. i have a knack for solving this kind of tricky lateral thinking puzzle far quicker than intended so the real test of a puzzle is whether it holds up even when that is the case. i cracked what was going on by puzzle five — i had solved the "normal" way through the first three, at puzzle four i saw all the month names and chunked the letter space up by month but was still confused at the may/yam interaction. this still gave me the click i needed for all the numbers in the bottom of each page (including the bottom right), so i went back to three and... couldn't figure it since i was looking at my previous naive solution and assuming those words were correct. i went onto five and the numbers really made it obvious that in some cases, there are weird diagonal connections. after solving it i went back to three and saw question mark and from there everything just broke open, i looked back at one and groaned seeing the rules and realizing what they meant. at this point the backwards words on the right side clicked and my last bit of confusion with the numbers at the bottom of the page resolved.
so, having discovered the logic of the whole book far earlier than intended, was the book a very rote solve? absolutely not, oh my god. i loved figuring the theme for 1 and 2, i particularly love the misdirect for 2 and the slow realization that it's zodiac animals and not just the random matching words we'd figured out, i loved that we had to re-populate the inkblots in 3 and that we used that sneaky little one i was wondering about at the bottom of the crossword, i was tickled that three became eight in 5, i LOVED the trick with the corners in 1, i had a great time using 11 to actually figure out the theme for one, which had still stumped me, as well as figuring out leftovers for 12 before even seeing 0! oh yes, and who can forget zodiac/zodiac??? i laughed out loud upon picking up on that one. realizing that parts of our metapuzzle were backwards was delightful, and i was grinning from cheek to cheek upon realizing that the final phrase is both in the gaps and as a contiguous region that we have to circle. this is EXACTLY the way a good metapuzzle should collapse in on itself at the end of a sequence.
good god. this was an incredible thing to play. you really nail the way that a puzzle is supposed to smoothly and cleverly twist and turn both on the macro level and the micro level. i'm so thrilled with every second that i spent on this!
(admittedly, 7-10 were straightforward given much of the above, but it was fun observing the way that the book tutorialized for people who hadn't yet figured the mechanics out)
Thank you for making this super unique game!
I saw a post about it on the metroidbrania subreddit and decided to check it out. Initially I thought I would abondon it since it was not clicking for me, but omw the moment it did I could not stop until I completely finished it. Absolutely amazing work and I loved it so much. Especially the last bit of search nr 12, which felt so cool.
Only after finishing did I read some reviews and saw people discuss how they had figured out the letters and numbers at the bottom which alluded me the entire time. I went back and figured out the page numbers which made me figure out the other numbers, it seems so silly in hindsight, but oh well.
Ima check out if you have made some other things because this is exactly how I like my metroidbranias
Thanks Sunil! So glad you liked it, I really enjoyed Square Worlds and had a nice time replaying it a few months ago.
And glad you enjoyed "in case you make a mistake", I was quite proud of that line. By the way, I'm sharing my next puzzle book for alpha testing today, if you want to try it out early: https://playcebo.itch.io/islands/?password=12345
