Matt Bateman
Griddler
Enjoying the fad of simple, online puzzle games like Wordle or Queens, I took a crack at my own puzzle concept. In Griddler, a player faces a 5x5 grid of mixed color squares. Each time a square is pressed, it changes the color of not only that box, but all surrounding boxes.
It was an old, recycled idea.
Way back in 2016, I had built a grid-based game in Python. As a placeholder, I had inserted colored squares into the grid, while the game was still in a half-built state, it was fun to click the broken grid and watch the colors change. The game changed course, but I remembered how much I had enjoyed the rotating colors.
Inspired by the fun, tactile panels on Simon Says, I designed a textured square in four colors.
The code was vanilla Javascript.
The twist would be you couldn't just change one square, you had to change a block at a time.
It felt similar to a Rubik's Cube, as someone who has never solved a Rubik's cube. I received some initial feedback, and built it out a little more fully with an intro screen explaining the game.
Initially just a blank canvas, I added several pre-built puzzles and had a few friends see what they think. A few days later, one of them texted me, "When are there going to be more puzzles?" I took that as a success.
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