Kit's Cookies & Kat's Cookies

New game! It's a Puzzlescript release called Kit's Cookies. I got inspired last week and slammed it out, then spent a few days polishing it. Thanks to Narf, Zeloz, and Rhete for playtesting; I really appreciate it!

My last Puzzlescript game blew up; this one's a lot easier, so I'm not expecting it to resonate with genre enthusiasts to the same extent. I'm certain you can make complex puzzles with this ruleset, but it's harder with the free-form nature of the match-3 win condition. There's just way more room for solutions I didn't anticipate, since you can line up the cookies in multiple places on the board. I tightened it up as much as I could though, and I still think the final game is a cute challenge.

I'm only a dabbler in puzzle design, but I've gotten a lot of joy out of making my puzzlescript games. I can see the path to being a real pervert for this kind of gamedev. I'd like to get there someday, but it'd definitely require making more than a handful of puzzles every few years.

I wrote the above paragraphs the day after putting out Kit's Cookies, but I held off on posting them because something neat was happening. Vextro friend Zeigfreid loaded up the project source in Puzzlescript's web editor, made a few cool levels, and shared them in our discord. After that, sraëka, sylvie, and wasnotwhynot joined in. I had a ton of fun playing their levels, and before too long we had enough to make a whole new game!

I'm really happy with how Kat's Cookies turned out. Kit's Cookies was a gentle game. Like I said above, I struggled to come up with challenging puzzles using the ruleset, and I was ultimately content to release it as a short, easy thing. My genius friends came up with some delightful and fiendish puzzles though, and I think together the two games form a satisfying, substantive package. Go give them a whirl!

My puzzle dev brain's leveled up through this whole process. I released a little game and was only somewhat satisfied with it. Then, unprompted, friends filled in exactly the gaps in the original release I'd struggled to fill. I like making tiny, single-screen puzzlers with simple rulesets — I don't feel any urge to make the next Baba Is You or what not. But next time I make a puzzle game, I want to sit with the ruleset longer, draft and discard more puzzles, and hold off on release until I'm confident I've made the best puzzles I can.

Oh, and for the record: puzzles 1, 4, and 7 are by sraëka, 2 and 6 are by sylvie, 3 and 5 are by Zeigfreid, 9 is by wasnotwhynot, and 8 is by me! Thanks so much again to everyone who contributed; this was the most spontaneous collab I've been a part of and it made me happy.

And thanks to Bart Bonte for plugging the original release on his excellent puzzle blog! He linked Gorgons' Gaze too a few years back. I'm still a puzzle dev amateur obviously, so I'm delighted any time actual genre connoisseurs enjoy my work. I hope to continue improving!