The game
designers (David Rhee and Elyot Grant, each with significant math or CS-theory backgrounds) quite evidently had fun building up some elaborate logic/control gadgets out of jelly squares. They produce all kinds of access-control structures, any-3-out-of-5 collection requirements, one-way doors, etc. If you are familiar with NP-hardness reductions, especially for sliding-puzzle-type domains, this is very much the kind of gadget vocabulary you learn to build with. What's interesting is that here, rather than design them, you are presented with them and have to wrap your head around what they actually do and how to manipulate them successfully.
It's a distinctive puzzle flavor, not one that dominates the whole experience, but one that particularly structures the overworld maps (which are, of course, themselves puzzles). I like it, especially as a change of pace from puzzle games that more freely and directly introduce "
new-rule"
mechanics. One might lament that the game doesn't directly teach the full range of problem-solving that was involved in its puzzles' construction; but it at least suggests some general ideas about gadget-design to anyone who pauses to reflect.
[Last edited by dojo_b at 08-03-2022 05:13 PM]