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Show HN: Corral – A Visual Logic Puzzle About Enclosing Numbers

26 points by MohammadAbuG 1y ago

Hey HN! I just finished building a puzzle game called Corral, and I’d love to share it with you. It’s a logic puzzle played on a rectangular grid, where some of the cells contain numbers. Your goal is to mark which cells are inside a single continuous loop that encloses all the numbers. For each numbered cell, the number tells you how many cells are visible in the four orthogonal directions (up, down, left, right) until a wall of the loop is hit, plus the cell itself. So a cell with a 2 must see one empty cell before hitting the loop boundary. Gameplay is all about deduction: you can mark cells as definitely inside or definitely outside the loop. The loop must be one continuous shape, with no "islands" inside. Every puzzle has a solution and can be solved using pure logic. There are three difficulty levels that you can choose from, enjoy! Would love to hear your thoughts, ideas, or bug reports. Thanks for taking a look!

IJ92 1y ago
cool puzzle! I like the visual updates, it would be interesting if you'd explain the algorithm used to generate the puzzles.
riffraff 1y ago
I'm on mobile, I clicked through and I had no idea of what I'm supposed to do. Perhaps there's a tutorial that's expected to be shown and wasn't, if not, I'd suggest you add one, the linkedin games ones have usually good ones to use as inspiration. Otherwise, an "hint" button is always a good idea to help with frustration. Edit: once I finally understood the rules, it's a pretty nice game!
- MohammadAbuG 1y ago
  I should add a tutorial with images because a lot of people were commenting thats it's not very clear how the game should be played, thanks for not giving up trying to understand it!
  - Gaming8392 1y ago
    I tried everything and I still don't understand. Left/right/middle click everywhere, typing numbers on the keyboard, space, enter... What is happening?
    - MohammadAbuG 1y ago
      you start with all the cells being inside the loop you need to click with a mouse left button or touch on the edge tiles of the loop to exclude them, if thats not working then it could be another problem.
monkeycantype 1y ago
Ok, I was confused by this, I had vastly overcomplicated what I thought you had to do, confused by the word 'loop' the only thing you can do in the puzzle is hide or reveal squares from the edges in. your goal is to make sure the number of contiguous square in the shape formed by a given square and the squares up,down,left,right equals the number in the square, the red number is just tally letting you know how far you are from your target
- MohammadAbuG 1y ago
  thank for explaining it better than I could! its a little confusing to describe it with words I should add an image tutorial.
albert_e 1y ago
Can you add a visual tutorial with examples. I had no idea what the numbers are. Came back to read your text description above and still only vaguely understand it. Sorry, ESL.
lindenr 1y ago
Really interesting! It does need an explanation - took me a bit of clicking around to discover the rules (which I actually enjoyed because it turned out not to be too complicated! But some will give up early). One aspect I liked about the larger puzzle sizes it that the topology becomes nontrivial: you can work out for sure that a cell has to be marked without knowing the exact path from the edge inwards, which you later narrow down. Feature request: can interior cells be marked? Right now it's disallowed which helps rule discovery but requires the user to remember more.
- MohammadAbuG 1y ago
  great suggestion, I need to add a way you can lock cells or flag them like in minesweeper
HeavyStorm 1y ago
This is actually fun!
andrelaszlo 1y ago
Marking/locking cells you're sure about would be a nice addition.
laurentlb 1y ago
I agree it's confusing at the beginning, but I think it's much better to figure out the rules on your own. It requires a bit of testing, but it's completely doable. I'd add a line below the game, e.g. "Your first goal is to figure out the rules. Click here if you're still confused after a while."
- monkeycantype 1y ago
  I really like that approach
rstarast 1y ago
The interface makes it almost impossible to solve a puzzle in logical steps. You might find some inspiration here: https://puzz.link/p?cave/10/10/i44t4g3r3g3j2h2h3zp3q5g32k4 https://puzz.link/p?cave/10/10/i44t4g3r3g3j2h2h3zp3q5g32k4 http://pzv.jp/p.html?bag/10/10/i44t4g3r3g3j2h2h3zp3q5g32k4 http://pzv.jp/p.html?bag/10/10/i44t4g3r3g3j2h2h3zp3q5g32k4 (from http://blog.livedoor.jp/bachelor_seal-puzzle/archives/90144842.html http://blog.livedoor.jp/bachelor_seal-puzzle/archives/901448...)
readthenotes1 1y ago
Oh good golly, is that daylight? Addictive :)
mcphage 1y ago
It creates puzzles with multiple possible solutions: 5 6 3 _ 4 _ _ _ 6 7 4 _ _ 4 _ _ The bottom right corner can be in the loop, or out of the loop, and both solutions are valid.
- MohammadAbuG 1y ago
  yes, the solutions are not unique, it would be very hard to make sure the puzzle has a unique solution probably requiring a brute force algorithm, the puzzle itself is NP complete, the way I generate the puzzle is to first create the "loop" with all cells having numbers in them then removing numbers from cells at random.

26 points by MohammadAbuG 1y ago

IJ92 1y ago

cool puzzle! I like the visual updates, it would be interesting if you'd explain the algorithm used to generate the puzzles.

riffraff 1y ago

I'm on mobile, I clicked through and I had no idea of what I'm supposed to do. Perhaps there's a tutorial that's expected to be shown and wasn't, if not, I'd suggest you add one, the linkedin games ones have usually good ones to use as inspiration. Otherwise, an "hint" button is always a good idea to help with frustration. Edit: once I finally understood the rules, it's a pretty nice game!

MohammadAbuG 1y ago
I should add a tutorial with images because a lot of people were commenting thats it's not very clear how the game should be played, thanks for not giving up trying to understand it!
- Gaming8392 1y ago
  I tried everything and I still don't understand. Left/right/middle click everywhere, typing numbers on the keyboard, space, enter... What is happening?
  - MohammadAbuG 1y ago
    you start with all the cells being inside the loop you need to click with a mouse left button or touch on the edge tiles of the loop to exclude them, if thats not working then it could be another problem.

monkeycantype 1y ago

Ok, I was confused by this, I had vastly overcomplicated what I thought you had to do, confused by the word 'loop' the only thing you can do in the puzzle is hide or reveal squares from the edges in. your goal is to make sure the number of contiguous square in the shape formed by a given square and the squares up,down,left,right equals the number in the square, the red number is just tally letting you know how far you are from your target

MohammadAbuG 1y ago
thank for explaining it better than I could! its a little confusing to describe it with words I should add an image tutorial.

albert_e 1y ago

Can you add a visual tutorial with examples. I had no idea what the numbers are. Came back to read your text description above and still only vaguely understand it. Sorry, ESL.

lindenr 1y ago

Really interesting! It does need an explanation - took me a bit of clicking around to discover the rules (which I actually enjoyed because it turned out not to be too complicated! But some will give up early). One aspect I liked about the larger puzzle sizes it that the topology becomes nontrivial: you can work out for sure that a cell has to be marked without knowing the exact path from the edge inwards, which you later narrow down. Feature request: can interior cells be marked? Right now it's disallowed which helps rule discovery but requires the user to remember more.

MohammadAbuG 1y ago
great suggestion, I need to add a way you can lock cells or flag them like in minesweeper

HeavyStorm 1y ago

This is actually fun!

andrelaszlo 1y ago

Marking/locking cells you're sure about would be a nice addition.

laurentlb 1y ago

I agree it's confusing at the beginning, but I think it's much better to figure out the rules on your own. It requires a bit of testing, but it's completely doable. I'd add a line below the game, e.g. "Your first goal is to figure out the rules. Click here if you're still confused after a while."

monkeycantype 1y ago
I really like that approach

rstarast 1y ago

The interface makes it almost impossible to solve a puzzle in logical steps. You might find some inspiration here: https://puzz.link/p?cave/10/10/i44t4g3r3g3j2h2h3zp3q5g32k4 https://puzz.link/p?cave/10/10/i44t4g3r3g3j2h2h3zp3q5g32k4 http://pzv.jp/p.html?bag/10/10/i44t4g3r3g3j2h2h3zp3q5g32k4 http://pzv.jp/p.html?bag/10/10/i44t4g3r3g3j2h2h3zp3q5g32k4 (from http://blog.livedoor.jp/bachelor_seal-puzzle/archives/90144842.html http://blog.livedoor.jp/bachelor_seal-puzzle/archives/901448...)

readthenotes1 1y ago

Oh good golly, is that daylight? Addictive :)

mcphage 1y ago

It creates puzzles with multiple possible solutions: 5 6 3 _ 4 _ _ _ 6 7 4 _ _ 4 _ _ The bottom right corner can be in the loop, or out of the loop, and both solutions are valid.

MohammadAbuG 1y ago
yes, the solutions are not unique, it would be very hard to make sure the puzzle has a unique solution probably requiring a brute force algorithm, the puzzle itself is NP complete, the way I generate the puzzle is to first create the "loop" with all cells having numbers in them then removing numbers from cells at random.