The Little Match Girl at the Battle of the Gray Peaks

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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 2 Write a review

Ebenezabeth decides battle strategy in a war between dino-riders, pteranodons and wellness instructors. Essentially, a single big logic puzzle as you place the most suitable units to repel/attack the enemy's units, then watch the fights play out. Didn't work out? Restart and try again. Ebenezabeth can explore the military encampment and its environs, chatting to NPCs etc to get a feel of the backstory to this conflict and the characters engulfed by it: this also provides useful strategic info. The puzzle itself is multi-dimensional, complex and interesting to solve. And once you've figured out how to not lose, you'll realize you then need to figure out how to (Spoiler - click to show) rout the opponent, and then how to draw a perfect stalemate to get the best ending, and a bonus puzzle. A deftly written and smartly implemented addition to the Little Match Girl canon.

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In 2012, Ryan Veeder published "The Statue Got Me High" as part of the Apollo 18+20 tribute album project. As the game begins, it appears that you have to solve a tricky logic puzzle, but it turns out that you don't have to solve it at all.

The reveal in "The Statue Got Me High" is funny, because gathering the clues to solve a logic puzzle like that would be boring. It was surprising but inevitable in hindsight that Ryan would give us a fun game instead of a boring logic puzzle.

In contrast, the purpose of "The Little Match Girl at the Battle of the Gray Peaks" is to be boring.

You do, in fact, have to solve the logic puzzle to win this game, and it is very boring work. In fact, when you win, the game explicitly acknowledges how boring it is, as part of a bonus puzzle.

I feel like this game is a practical joke played on the player. "Ha ha, you dork, you wasted your time solving a boring logic puzzle!"

I think I wouldn't have bothered if I weren't a fan of Ryan's work in general.

In addition to solving the boring logic puzzle, there is one basically legit "aha!" puzzle here, but I think even that puzzle didn't have enough hinting. IMO, good puzzles, like good jokes, have solutions that are surprising but inevitable in hindsight, but this one wasn't.

(Spoiler - click to show)
When assigning units, when you win the war, you lose the game.

The clue to winning the game is the remark, "She had survived the war with no more than a few scratches—but she was hurt all the same, by the memories of the Reptons and dinosaurs who had suffered and perished under her orders. She would turn the problem over in her head night after night—she would realize, after a few years, exactly how she could have done better—and the knowledge would haunt her for the rest of her life."

When I read that, I read it as referring only to the Reptons and dinosaurs who were acting under her orders. That mislead me from the real solution, which is to set up seven stalemates.

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