Earth IQWXZS Must Die

This game is about aliens coming to earth and holding the earth hostage until you, an above-average intelligence human, can solve a bomb defusing problem that comes down to flipping a series of switches in every poissible combination without repeating.

When I was a young man, my father helped local missionaries, and one day he asked me to travel with one to an appointment. That missionary got lost and was confused, so he went back home and we both waited for an hour until the rest of our group came back. It was the most boring time of my life. To entertain myself, I tried to tap out every combination of fingers on my right hand without repeats: 12345, 12354, etc. and it filled up the time.

So I already had the solution 'in hand' when playing this game, but it was interesting to see it sketched out.

The puzzle itself is interesting, and the framing story is good, imo. For my personal tastes, I would have enjoyed some physical characterization to compliment the mental and emotional characterization. For instance, the aliens are described as "They are about as weird as you expected, but all the same, they look weird in some unexpected ways and normal in others. They look weird enough to you that you know you must look pretty weird to them as well." This gives a ton of information about your emotional state and your mental reaction, but little on the aliens themselves. That's not necessarily bad; a lot of the best science fiction and horror rely on indescribable things. I just thought it'd be cool to learn more in this scenario.

Last comment is that while this was entered into the single choice jam, it felt like a lot more than 1 choice to me. There are multiple correct patterns, for instance, and the version I played had at least two areas (the 3 puzzle and the 4 puzzle) that allowed those multiple patterns. So I think it's marginal when it comes to the theme, but overall I enjoy this type of puzzle.

As his second entry in the Single Choice Jam, Andrew proposes a maths/logical puzzle with switches. The Earth is set for destruction, but the Galaxy granted the poor human solace if they managed to disarm some bombs. One wrong flick and…

Back to the setting, the premise kind of reminded me of those sci-fi story like HHGG, where Earth is just inconsequential in the eye of the Galaxy, a backward planet in the way of advancement… It’s always a riot when those stories are used, mirroring the aliens’ view on Humans as we might be doing towards other species on Earth. Often makes me giggle a bit (and this entry was no exception!).

But the most important aspect of this game is its gameplay: the switch puzzle. With a certain mathematical pattern (shudders), you must disarm three bombs: one with two switches, one with three, and a last one with… four. Your character technically disarms a load more, but as a player you don’t! (hurray!)

The puzzle itself is intriguing, as it is not one you’d expect (like the Wolf/Goat/Food river cross, or get 1L of water from three containers), and solving it can be fun. But the novelty also runs off pretty quickly, due to the repetitiveness of the task and the length of the pattern. It feels pretty grindy by the last bomb.

The author indicated that the work was not complete, missing some levels and some QoL features. I hope they consider adding some more writing to pad around the puzzles a little.