Colours and colours and colours of colours

[venta]

Attention, procrastinators!

This simple flash game:

http://www.flashbynight.com/drench/

is surprisingly fun.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Nice concept!

I'm a bit disappointed that, although the optimal moves on a given board are hard to calculate in general it seems that a very naive approach almost always finds an optimal or near-optimal sequence in practice.

[venta.livejournal.com]

It does for the first few games :) I found that once the number of moves started dropping I had to do a lot more planning, particularly in the later stages.

I assume the boards are randomly generated, though, so I don't know that it's actually guaranteed to be possible to complete a board in the permitted number of moves. (It's certainly not always possible if you're me, but that may be a personal limitation :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Bah, I wasted a heap of time on Drench last year: why did you have to go and remind me of it?

I never managed to get below 22 or so moves, so either it's not necessarily possible, or I'm quite rubbish.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I suspect it does produce impossible boards, but it's hard to prove!

And yes, I have to do a lot of planning too, but it's the way it seems to be all calculation and no ingenuity that I was objecting to. I've yet to see a board where tunneling specifically to the hardest-to-reach piece didn't get me within a move or two of all the rest as well.