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Dev log: Murdoku is live β€” a cat whodunit where every witness tells the truth (gridpaw.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/dailygames@lemmy.zip
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Update: Murdoku joined the site yesterday. It's a murder sudoku β€” place cat suspects in a mansion's rooms, follow witness statements that are always true, and the suspect left alone with the victim is the killer. 4Γ—4 Easy and 6Γ—6 Tricky cases, generated fresh every time and solvable by logic alone. Also shipped this week: the Shikaku tutorial now teaches corner-to-corner drag instead of "press the number" (pointed out by Reddit players), and a cleanup pass deleted 345 dead CSS rules across 29 pages plus 30 small QA fixes.

One confession: the public changelog had gone stale for a month while all this shipped. Caught it while writing this post and backfilled it.

How Murdoku works:

  • Place suspects so no two figures share a row or column.
  • Every witness statement is true: where they were, what they stood on, who they were with, which room was empty.
  • The victim's room holds exactly two figures β€” the victim and the killer.
  • Place everyone, hit Accuse!

The feedback loop stays open: tell me what feels wrong and it usually ships the same week.

Full changelog: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-devlog Play Murdoku: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-murdoku Daily Akari: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-daily

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[–] 1 point 1 month ago (4 children)

I have some feedback:

  • rooms shouldn't be disconnected
  • rooms should have clearly different tiles, lots of them are identical, makes it impossible to actually solve it without brute forcing
  • some clues are wrong. Ex. Got a "in a corner" clue, but the cat ended up not being in a corner (unless it was a "corner" formed by identical tiles belonging to different rooms)
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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Thanks for digging in, this is genuinely useful. You basically reverse-engineered the corner clue: the engine counts a room boundary as a wall, so two identical tiles from different rooms make what it calls a corner. Agreed the clue wording is misleading, that needs fixing. Disconnected rooms and the tile variety point are both noted too. No dates to promise, but these are the next things going in.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 weeks ago (2 children)

    Hey, no rush! Just keep up the good work! Your games are great, so I'm just glad we can play it!

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 4 weeks ago

    Update: the corner clue fix just went live. Walls are now only the board edge, so "in a corner" means a real corner again β€” no more invisible walls between rooms. The other two points (rooms staying connected, more distinct room tiles) are still on the list. Thanks for the kind words, and honestly for the sharp bug report too β€” https://gridpaw.com/changelog/ has the note if you want the details.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 4 weeks ago

    The other two things from your list are live now as well: rooms stay connected in one piece, and every room gets its own floor texture and tint combo, so no more twin rooms. Details are in the changelog if you're curious. Thanks again for playing so carefully β€” this round of feedback made the game genuinely better. https://gridpaw.com/changelog/

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    • [–] [S] 1 point 4 weeks ago

    Update: you asked, we shipped β€” and the first-case flow got rebuilt.

    • The tutorial now teaches by doing: it points at the suspect to pick and highlights the exact tile to place, instead of three paragraphs of rules.
    • Wrong taps now explain themselves (that's furniture / that's the victim), and the highlighted tile scrolls into view on mobile.
    • Also shipped: clearer page titles (Hashi, Two Not Touch), a homepage description that explains Shikaku in one line, and the Hitori crossword answer stated up front.

    Full changelog: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-devlog Play Murdoku: https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-murdoku

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    [–] [S] 1 point 4 weeks ago

    Update: we built on this. The Case Trail is live - five linked cases, one Cat Burglar. Solve each scene (two 4x4 warm-ups, then three trickier 6x6 houses), name the room where the killer was caught with the victim, and the clue initials you collect spell out what the burglar was after. Cases are fixed, so everyone works the same five puzzles - progress saves in your browser. https://gridpaw.com/from/lemmy-trail

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