Duline

[b]duline[/b] is a geometric puzzler, if you've ever heard of such a thing. I wouldn't put it in the same hat as tangrams and whatnot, feels closer to a draw a line puzzler, but what do I know? the task is simple: cover all the green tiles on the level with as few lines (chains, as the game calls them) as possible, white areas are off-limits. chains can't be longer than 12 pixels, but you have two colors to work with, so once you drew a blue one, you can switch to orange, then back to blue, etc. if you succeed, the border turns green and you'll hear a soft ding. the chances of getting a sensory overload from the game are practically non-existant. what the game calls bridges are tiles that cover non-green areas and the secondary goal is to make the chains as short as possible by eliminating as many of the unnecessary blue/orange tiles as possible. you'd think if there are 3 green pixels, you can just plonk 3 blue pixels on them, done. except if the goal is to do it in 2 chains, you're over the limit, very much not done. [b]there's no timer or fail state[/b], it's all about optimization, finding where to place what, then fine-tune until you meet at least the chain requirement, but…

This is a completely unique set of puzzle rules, that feel like they should have been invented and published by Nikoli sometime in the 1980s, but that we somehow collectively missed discovering until now. Rather than a unique solution pencil puzzle however, this game takes those rules and builds an optimization challenge with a surprising amount of depth: the levels, which may look a little intimidating or messy at first, are all carefully designed, full of interesting logical realizations, and incredibly challenging. They can be approached in two ways: either "chain par" (successfully completing a level at all in no more than a set amount of chains, but possibly using more blocks than needed), or "block par" (successfully completing a level with the minimum amount of placed blocks). The game tries to steer you away from attempting the block par by hiding those targets until you have completed a few levels normally, and I recommend you heed its advice - while finding the "chain par" solutions can already be unexpectedly difficult, finding the "block par" is the absolute true challenge that will keep you up for many hours. A very good game for its price, if you are into these typ…