Stained Glass
As a child I had a little puzzle with pictures of ducks. This wasn't a jigsaw puzzle though, you had to arrange the 9 square tiles so that all of the ducks' heads matched up with their tails and formed one long trail of ducks winding around the picture. You probably remember something similar, or at least I hope you do. Sometimes I have dreams about things and then can't remember if they really happened or not.
Stained Glass over at Gamedesign is a logic puzzle with a similar premise. There is an arrangement of tiles in the right-hand "window", each in four segments, with each segment potentially a different color. You must arrange colored tiles in the left-hand "window" so that all of the colors match. Hitting "Reset" obviously resets the current stage, including giving you a new mix of tiles and colors. When you finish one level you move on to the next, larger level. Sound familiar?
Don't worry! Unlike White Jigsaw, the window doesn't grow endlessly larger and the pieces endlessly smaller in a living, breathing fractal nightmare. Stained Glass has only 5 stages, and once you're done, you're done. It's a beautifully crafted, short and simple game that's perfect for waking up your brain first thing in the morning.
Analysis: I had only one quibble with Stained Glass: when you drag a piece from either window and drop it on another, it would be nice if the pieces would automagically swap places. As it is now if you try to drop a piece into any occupied space it just bounces back to whence it came. I also thought the sounds to be a little too cutesy for my tastes, and they got quite annoying by stage five. I ended up just unplugging my computer speakers and playing some music instead.
Other than that, I found it to be sufficiently interesting but not frustrating in the first four levels. The fifth level was quite challenging, but knowing it was the last kept me from destroying my mouse when I hit "Reset" for the third time. As for strategy... it's a logic puzzle! Just start moving pieces around and see what works!
Nice little one. Reminded me of tests I took for the army, just with more colour. Scoring high in puzzles like this, must have a knack for colour and getting an overall picture of things.
Worth the five to ten minutes instead of doing a Sudoku. When it's made, it's done.
Finally finished it
nice mini game
thank you jay
Nice little puzzle, none to hard though
just like most puzzles find the odd man out edge and go from there
This is an awesome game
so simple yet....
so hard to find one like it...
a good game to play after you finished finished a cat a bath and are waiting for you're t-shirt to dry
I just wish I could start at the highest level and repeat it instead of having to cycle through all the levels...
One look at this game and i didnt even need instrucionts, my grandpa had a set of wooden blocks like these befor i usta play with them all them all the time, good find.
Stig, I didn't think of that. The 5th stage would make a NICE little puzzle game in itself.
>> a good game to play after you finished finished a cat a >> bath and are waiting for you're t-shirt to dry
FlyingSheep, I didn't think of that either. I would be surprised if I had.
Know what's annoying? Devs that don't think about color blind folks. This game sucks.
Cool! Tetravex with colors! Note to l0ser: try this. It's the same game, but with numbers instead.
The game also generates unsolvable puzzles...
I just spent half an hour noting colours and quadrants for one game only to discover one was unsolvable.
For level five there should be 20 possible "spare" quadrants (by which I mean un-matched coloured quadrants, the ones placed along the sides). You can find definate spares by taking all the blocks with at least one of any colour then matching them up, whatever's left must be a spare (not the block, just that colour and that quadrant) i.e. you may discover that at least one "top" blue is a spare.
If any one quadrant (or side of the windowframe) has five definate "spares", then the blocks (say, as was the case in my puzzle, two yellows, a red, a brown and a pink all on the bottom quadrant) then out of all the blocks with brown, pink, yellow or red "bottoms" you should be able to arrange five next to each other. If you can't do this, the puzzle is unsolvable.
It's not a very good explanation... but I hope you get the gist.
~Sparky
You know what's even more annoying? Developers don't take into consideration people without hands either! How inconsiderate! I'm going to start a class-action lawsuit against Sony since almost all of the Playstation games require that I use my hands!
Moving on...
The first levels are fairly easy, though I attribute this mainly to the fact that there are more colors than there are vertical or horizontal spaces. In other words, here are your colors:
Red
Blue
Yellow
Light Green
Dark Green
Orange
Violet
Pink
Brown
Cyan
10 Colors, but if a grid has a total of 12 squares, (i.e. 3x4) then you're almost guaranteed to find at least one square that has a colored triangle that has no match (i.e. a square that has a violet triangle on the right side, but no corresponding square with a violet triangle on the left side). Once you've found a colored triangle that has no match, you know that that square has to go on one of the edges of the puzzle. So if, using the same example, you have that square with a violet triangle on the right side with no match, you know that that triangle has to go on the right edge of the puzzle.
Usually I was able to get a couple of these 'gimme's and the rest was filling in the blanks. Now, as the puzzle got bigger, number of non-matching triangles became less, so it was more of a challenge.
Granted, most of you probably already knew these things.
Also, I'd be very surprised if the puzzle could generate an unsolvable puzzle. If you think you've been given one, take a screen shot and I'll see if I can't solve it.
Oh, and developers should definitely be more considerate of quadriplegics.
I enjoy this site daily; it's most enjoyable, thoughtfully done, and well written. Thank you, Jay! This is the first time I have ever posted, and I must admit that I'm not very logical. Level one was easy -- after that, I've found that this puzzle is incredibly hard to do. But I'm not giving up on it (for the next few years :) ....
tis moi, thanks for the kind words.
Yes, despite the pretty colors, the puzzle is basically a logic puzzle at its core. Keep trying! You can try one of the highly structured methods a couple of the above commentors mentioned, or just do like I did and drag and drop the heck out of the tiles. Either way it's a fun little puzzle!
what do you have to do
**sigh**
I've done this fifth level SIX times now. I've cluttered the board and emptied it manually without resetting, then I've reset and tried over (and repeated the process), and I just simply CANNOT finish it. It's infuriating. haha I have put off eating dinner for an hour because of this silly puzzle. I mean, really--the others went on the first go, and this one is just too darn tricky. I hate leaving games unfinished ESPECIALLY on the last level, so I'm leaving it open FOR NOW and maybe I'll complete it later. I really hope I do, for sanity's sake.
This Game Is So Addicting
This Game Is So Addicting
just finished level 5, took me about an hour an a half. but I have a question, does the game generate random pieces or is it the same every time?
ps. too lazy to log into typekey again.
Level 5 didn't seem too tricky to me. It took me about 15 minutes. But maybe I was just lucky. Great game though. I'm in study hall at school right now and am lucky enough to have it in a computer room. I play this one a lot.
My name is David Cohen, and I'm an author working on an educational project to help inspire young, creative minds. This project is designed to be an online, non-profit, interactive puzzle-solving book called 52 Master Pieces. Your Stained Glass puzzle concept would be a perfect addition to this project.
I was wondering if it might be possible to use an image from your game as an example in my book. For players who enjoy the challenge, I'd like to direct them to the website: https://jayisgames.com/games/stained-glass/ to continue the fun. I would only include the link above or an image with your permission and approval.
Please let me know if there is any additional information about my project that you would like to know. Thanks for your consideration!
With gratitude,
David Cohen
Update