Spinpossible - a mindbending 3x3 puzzle game - free for iOS/Android/Web

[Spinpossible]

A few friends and I are working on a free puzzle game called Spinpossible (www.spinpossible.com). The Rubik's cube was one of our inspirations for the design so we're really excited to hear what cubers think of the game.

The puzzles are simple but can be mindbendingly difficult. You play by spinning groups of numbered tiles (see screenshots below), the goal being to arrange the tiles in order, 1 through 9, using the minimum number of spins.

Spinpossible may seem simpler than a 3x3x3 cube as it is a just a 2-dimensional 3x3 grid, but because the game forces you to find solutions in the minimum possible number of moves, the puzzles can be mindbendingly difficult and they present a unique and interesting challenge. In addition, Spinpossible has special levels that prevent you from using certain types of operations, which requires you to learn how to solve puzzles in counter-intuitive ways.

It's our first game and we just made new versions for iPhone, Android and web. We’d love to get feedback and/or ideas for how to improve the game, suggestions for puzzles or game modes, comments on the art and sound, comments on difficulty and level progression, etc.

There are 4 modes of play:

1. Puzzle - we've designed more than 100 puzzles of increasing difficulty
2. Arcade - solve puzzles while racing against the clock
3. Random - play unlimited random puzzles of any difficulty
4. Multiplayer - challenge your friends or play rated quickmatches against other players - (for anyone here who likes competitions you will probably like this mode)

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Here are links to each version. You don't need an account or anything to try it, but if you create one then you can sync your progress across all devices.

iPhone & iPad ($1)
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spinpossible/id508679690

Android (free)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.spinpossible.Spinpossible

Online with flash (free)
www.spinpossible.com

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We also made a Sandbox feature for experimenting with move combinations and designing and sharing custom puzzles. Here's the a link to the sandbox
https://spinpossible.com/play/sandbox.pl

And here's more detailed instructions for using the sandbox
https://spinpossible.com/faq.pl#Sandbox

The short version of the instructions: To change the starting configuration of the board, enter the tile numbers in scan order (left to right and then down the rows). Put a minus sign before the number to turn it 180 degrees. For example here are 2 easy puzzles. (Hint, they can both be done in 3 moves)

• 823456719 (1 and 8 are swapped)
• 8234-56719 (1 and 8 are swapped and the 5 is upside down)

You can also use a # sign to make the remaining spaces blank, or to make gaps in the board. For example this string makes a 2x2 board with the 1, 2, 4 and 5:

• 12#45#

If you can create interesting puzzles using this please go ahead and share here!

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The few people we've shown so far really like it. Please let us know what you think! We really welcome any suggestions or comments on how to improve the game and would otherwise like to know what elements are enjoyable. Any 5 star ratings/reviews would be super, but if you would rate it one star I'd appreciate it if you could post here first with why so that we can fix it asap. Thanks to everyone who checks us out!

 

[evogler]

Cool game! I've been playing it a lot in the last 24 hours.

 

[Spinpossible]

Thanks, glad you like it!

What did you think of the difficulty level? Some people have told us that the game is too hard. However, we wanted to make a serious puzzle game so it wasn't exactly intended to be easy. I'm guessing the difficulty progression is appropriate for cubers but please let me know what you think.

Also, have you tried multiplayer at all yet? We're interested to see if people like competing on puzzle solving speed/efficiency and its a pretty unique part of our game that we're hoping to get feedback on.

Thanks again for the feedback!

 

[evogler]

Ya, it's more challenging than your typical flash game puzzle. I like that, though. I think it's within an enjoyable range of difficulty. Probably having some cube-related thought processes gives me a head start.
I haven't tried multiplayer yet.

 

[Spinpossible]

Ya, it's more challenging than your typical flash game puzzle. I like that, though. I think it's within an enjoyable range of difficulty. Probably having some cube-related thought processes gives me a head start.

Cubing experience would surely help, like for example the swaps puzzles only have two patterns and once you learn those algorithms basically all swaps puzzles are the same.

That's super that the difficulty was enjoyable. How far did you get exactly? There's definitely no reason to feel bad about getting stuck eventually, so far no one has been able to solve every level (lol, or at least without using a computer!)

 

[Spinpossible]

We'll be making the iphone version cost $1 later today so if you haven't downloaded it already be sure to get it for free before then