Fun times! I realise the UX might be tricky, but having a way to input things using a keyboard would be cool.
Another issue is that multiplicative identity seems to be used too often. That is, too often the equation boils down to something like "8 × 1 = 8" or "5 ÷ 1 = 5". This would ramp up the difficulty considerably faster, though, so you might want to slow down the complexity increase a bit to compensate.
Oh, and a way to copy the grid into ASCII art would be cool, including for bug reports. For example, after a few puzzles I ran into
9 4 + 2 = 9 ?
, which is a bit silly. There's only one possibility, and only one given number, so the solution is trivial. And this was after solving ~10 of these.
It would be good if it was stateful. I pressed the Back button by mistake, and when I returned it was back to square one. This could be as simple as saving a starting seed plus an offset per level. Gamifying it with a level counter would be great.
Colour-blind users would probably appreciate more than colour feedback to indicate an error.
Sometimes there are equations which are completely filled in with no holes, so they don't affect the puzzle at all. These could be removed entirely, since they are effectively just noise.
Ordering the numbers which have to be dragged, well, numerically, would be nice - it doesn't make the puzzle any easier or harder, just makes it easier to see how many I have of each digit.
Would you be OK to publish the code online? I'm sure lots of people would want to fork and play around with the idea.
> For example, after a few puzzles I ran into 9 4 + 2 = 9 ? , which is a bit silly. There's only one possibility, and only one given number, so the solution is trivial. And this was after solving ~10 of these.
I noticed this as well, but there's a non-silly subtlety that I think you and I both missed - this easy puzzle was the first introduction of the multi-digit concept. Everything prior had been single digits only.
I also think that multiplication and division by 1 should be pared down (if not eliminated). In general, it'd be nice to favor larger numbers instead of using 1/2/3 so much.
Another issue is that multiplicative identity seems to be used too often. That is, too often the equation boils down to something like "8 × 1 = 8" or "5 ÷ 1 = 5". This would ramp up the difficulty considerably faster, though, so you might want to slow down the complexity increase a bit to compensate.
Oh, and a way to copy the grid into ASCII art would be cool, including for bug reports. For example, after a few puzzles I ran into
, which is a bit silly. There's only one possibility, and only one given number, so the solution is trivial. And this was after solving ~10 of these.It would be good if it was stateful. I pressed the Back button by mistake, and when I returned it was back to square one. This could be as simple as saving a starting seed plus an offset per level. Gamifying it with a level counter would be great.
Colour-blind users would probably appreciate more than colour feedback to indicate an error.
Sometimes there are equations which are completely filled in with no holes, so they don't affect the puzzle at all. These could be removed entirely, since they are effectively just noise.
Ordering the numbers which have to be dragged, well, numerically, would be nice - it doesn't make the puzzle any easier or harder, just makes it easier to see how many I have of each digit.
Would you be OK to publish the code online? I'm sure lots of people would want to fork and play around with the idea.