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.