Hello hello. This is a game I was originally going to write in C++, but a good friend that's very skilled with Pico-8 made the software seem very enticing, so I decided to give scripting with it a shot instead. The concept's based on a thing I did a few times out of boredom some car rides as a kid. Said thing is more or less the first/tutorial mode and I built on the idea some more with the other two.
There's some flyby text explaining how to play when you hover over the modes, but at its core you need to reduce a set of numbers to the single highest possible digit. Left or right lets you position your cursor, and then holding O (or X in Suredux and Sumutex) starts selection mode. Hold left or right during this to highlight a second number then release O/X to add/multiply! There's a few other mechanics sprinkled in there (multiples of 10 are really good for boosting your score, for example), so hopefully it'll be fun to come back and try your hand at improving your speed and high score (feel free to share them). Feedback is both welcome and appreciated!
This is a really cool game, but I'm not sure if you realize some important math behind the game. When you repeatedly add the digits of a number together, that does the same thing as taking the number modulo 9. This means that in your first game mode, Redux, the player can't actually change the final digit. So, the only way for the player to earn extra points is to make sums of 10. But honestly, it's a far better strategy just to add all the digits up as quickly as possible without any regard for the order in which you add them.
The modulo 9 thing also explains why 9's are so useful in Suredux. Since 9's are equivalent to 0 modulo 9, multiplying by 9 is essentially just multiplying by 0, and that's why you get your 9 back every time you multiply by it.
Hope this was interesting! Thanks for making the game!
Keen eye! I originally wasn't going to include Redux because of that, but I figured it'd serve as a nice tutorial given the controls are a bit different. Getting a bunch of 10s before the timer starts moving faster does also seem to work well for getting a nice high score. Or so I thought at least, but maybe I'm wrong on that haha. Thanks for the interesting insight; much appreciated!
Nice job! It's encouraging to see this, it's kinda similar to a little math game I've been thinking of making myself, also based on a game I've played in my head.
Whoa, nice! Glad to give you some momentum on that idea, I'd be interested in checking it out for sure.
Thanks. I've had the idea for a while, but since the concept's so open ended, I'm currently trying to figure out the rules that determine which number "puzzles" can be solved in multiple ways, and which are unsolvable so I avoid those and players won't get stuck. ;)
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