Before WPC 2023, I ran a Puzzle Getchu!, a contest themed on Ape Escape. I had intended to queue these puzzles for posting before WPC, but didn't have the time. Better late than never!
Monkey Madness is the final level of Ape Escape, taking place first in an amusement park, and ending up in a castle floating in space. The level has 24 monkeys - 11 in the first (bottom) half, and 13 in the second (top) half. It's also huge, taking up 20% of a speedrun, so for the contest puzzle I had to go big. 14x14 was where I started, but was actually too small, so I bumped it up to 16x16. Oh right, the genre choice: I really liked the "one X per region" rule from the Pentominous in So Many Bees, so I brought that back with monkeys instead of bees. It ended up at 40 points, which on finishing pace would be 16 minutes for this puzzle. Interestingly, Ken Endo got here with more time than that and did not solve in time, similar to his performance in Puzzle Zodiac - also arriving at the final puzzle with plenty of time and coming up short. My contests always seem to have a "boss puzzle" at the end that really kicks people around, but it's always a standout and this was no exception: in the feedback I got afterwards, this was the most mentioned puzzle by far.
Rules: Divide the grid into regions along cell boundaries so that each region contains exactly one monkey (shown as a monkey inside a hexagon) and exactly one other clue. A white circle (Spiral Galaxies clue) indicates that the region has 180 degree rotational symmetry centered on the clue. A number in an X (Compass) clue, if given, indicates the number of cells inside that region that are further than the clue in the direction of the number.
Oh right I also had to make an example puzzle. So I did - it's pretty uninspired, but meh. I needed an example and this was the last one I made, and I knocked out all the examples over 2 days to rush the contest out before WPC. But also, I didn't want to re-use ideas from the main puzzle!
No comments:
Post a Comment