I'm really sorry about this

[davidn]

Apparently not feeling like he had unleashed enough suffering on the world, Qrostar - the creator of Hanano Puzzle - has released another puzzle game. This one is called Jelly Puzzle, or something like it, and will be instantly familiar to anyone who played the previous one - it features more coloured blocks and infuriating PxTone music in prime-numbered time signatures, this time with a higher-resolution Worms 2-ish aesthetic.


HOW THE HELL ARE YOU MEANT TO DO THIS

Have fun with this one, because this time around, non-Japanese speakers don't even get the benefit of instructions! Left-click to move a block left, right-click to move it right. Blocks of the same colour (blue, not-blue and other) placed adjacent to each other merge together. That's all I've been able to work out so far. The solution to level 1 is not among these things.

I'm not 100% sure as to the goal of the game yet (though it's probably to eliminate all the 1-block pieces), but after the last one, I think the only thing this author would ask you to do with jelly is attempt to nail it to the ceiling.

Get it here or here - and say goodbye to your brain.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

JD again, I knew you'd pass this along to your chums here. You sure must really hate them...

Also I made it up to puzzle 8 and had to stop as it made me want to start crying after a while. It took Hanano until puzzle 20 or so for that to happen and the person who got through all 20 stages said it is a harder game so... yeah.

I liked having my life back too.

Also completely on the wrong post but I skimmed through some of your Hatoful vids and you all have the most wonderful of personal issues to even try this :)

[davidn]

Believe me, from a skim of the videos you don't even know the beginning of the personal issues involved ;) This game is hardly the worst thing I've done to most of them (the worst thing being cutting some of them to bits in the Hatoful videos).

I thought I was doing quite well for a while, as this time I completed the first level in under half an hour - but puzzle eight! Think of us stuck back here at puzzle 6, which is clearly not possible. Even though this is exactly what happened on every level of Hanano - the cycle of looking at an impossible puzzle, trying it anyway, learning what it expected you to do, knowing that was impossible and trying it anyway, and eventually clawing a way to a solution before it all started again in the next level.

It's certainly interesting playing it after Hanano, not being able to swap things around and having the puzzle come from ordering things left and right instead of lifting them up.

[(Anonymous)]

Oddly enough with puzzle 6 I didn't touch anything and just stared at it for like 5 minutes, then got it on my first attempt. I felt sooo smart... and then 7 comes along and adds a twist to the formula that seems like a terrible harbinger of brain pain. Hope you get to see it soon!

I think the experience with Hanano, while helping in terms of being familiar with some of the basic design, might be a bit of a detriment as I keep looking for ways to elevate blocks like in that game and it simply doesn't seem possible in this game.

...Much like puzzle 8 :(

[davidn]

Yes, I... would have thought that eliminating the possibility of lifting blocks would make the game much easier as it was one less thing that you might be expected to do! But taking away the ability to swap blocks over has more than made up for that... now, things that appeared simple in Hanano are the impossible-seeming tasks.

When I first started up the game, I would never have been able to solve them just by looking, mostly because the red and green colours are near-identical in my vision... but as the game's graphic assets are lying around out in the open in the data folder, I was able to shift the colour of green more towards cyan so that I could tell the difference. That's the kind of game customization I like :)

[premchaia_pre4]

Gurer'f n yriry gung pna or fvtavsvpnagyl uneqre vs lbh erzrzore Unanab Chmmyr jryy, and that's really tricky to express at all without giving it away; to be maximally safe, return to it after completing^Wtrying level 18 for a while.

[(Anonymous)]

...and I finished up puzzle 8 right after posting that. This means this journal is a good luck charm. I will make a note to abuse this fact in the future.

[davidn]

It does seem that declaring being stuck on a level helps greatly in getting past it! I'm now stuck on level 8 and experiencing the same symmetry block that you were - I know that one of these groups has to slide over the other, but unsure how...

Unless...! Hang on.

[davidn]

Yes! Breaking the symmetry was the way to go...

I can't marvel enough at how incredible Qrostar's puzzle design is, setting things up so that a solution appears to be apparent each time but then having you learn to completely go against your own expectations and find a hidden way that is nevertheless completely logical... and to do that on every single level.

I have to wonder if he has some sort of solver/algorithm for designing these (like I tend to use for my own puzzle games to check how unique my solution is) or whether he just has an astonishing raw puzzle-setting talent...

[premchaia_pre4]

You more or less always have to break the symmetry in cases like that; the question is how. My mathematical intuition suggests that there's a deeper reason but I don't have a full grasp of it.

[davidn]

I should mention that everyone who's commented on this post but me did complete all fifty levels of Hanano! Although it did take varying degrees of anguish to get there.

[kjorteo]

beat 11

12 is absurd

sleep