Originally, I just had people either start at the beginning, or (if they’d played before), pick a level near where they left off.
This wasn’t great because:
a) the first few levels are tutorials that actively force you to learn the mechanics of the game, and were too “easy” for this exercise.
b) if you’ve played awhile, there is some selection pressure on your available levels where “they’re a place you were previously stumped, and were maybe extra hard.” The one person who didn’t rate this exercise highly at my “Fractal Strategy” workshop was someone who picked an existing Stumped puzzle, beat their head against it for 2 hours and then looked up the solution and found it was something they really wouldn’t have been able to figure out.
Levels vary in how much they feel “fair” for this exercise.
So! I’ve constructed a new opening puzzle for people who have never played Baba is You before, and now run it through a couple playtests and iterated and I think have a decent version of it. I’ve also picked two “partway through the game” puzzles I think are particularly good.
I’ve created a spreadsheet which I plan to update as I do more iterations of the exercise and try other levels.
Originally, I just had people either start at the beginning, or (if they’d played before), pick a level near where they left off.
This wasn’t great because:
a) the first few levels are tutorials that actively force you to learn the mechanics of the game, and were too “easy” for this exercise.
b) if you’ve played awhile, there is some selection pressure on your available levels where “they’re a place you were previously stumped, and were maybe extra hard.” The one person who didn’t rate this exercise highly at my “Fractal Strategy” workshop was someone who picked an existing Stumped puzzle, beat their head against it for 2 hours and then looked up the solution and found it was something they really wouldn’t have been able to figure out.
Levels vary in how much they feel “fair” for this exercise.
So! I’ve constructed a new opening puzzle for people who have never played Baba is You before, and now run it through a couple playtests and iterated and I think have a decent version of it. I’ve also picked two “partway through the game” puzzles I think are particularly good.
I’ve created a spreadsheet which I plan to update as I do more iterations of the exercise and try other levels.