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Google I/O '24 Puzzles
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- nindalf 3y agoWould have been nice if they'd tested it on Safari as well. It's playable, but frustrating enough that you'd switch to Chrome.
- countrymile 3y agoIt seems fine on Firefox mobile
- zegl 3y agoThe real puzzle is to figure out how to play it in Safari.
- timvdalen 3y agoOn puzzle 5, why is the obvious short solution wrong? The marble reaches the finish line, and then the page says "Something's not right, keep trying!"
- jvmboi 3y agoOne unstated rule is that you have to use all pieces. Number three can already be solved with two pieces and that also doesn't count. I strongly dislike this kind of puzzle.
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- matthewfelgate 3y agoThanks for sharing. Where does it even say you need to use every piece?!
- timvdalen 3y agoHmm, I got the solution it wanted after a lot of trial and error, but I still don't understand why that one was correct
- thaumasiotes 3y agoThat also happens on an earlier level. The answer appears to be that there is an undocumented requirement to use all of the tiles. I'm not sure why Google appears to believe that documentation is weakness.
- ofrzeta 3y agoThere's even documentation. Clicking on the (i) icon says "Place tiles on the grid to create a path for your marble". It would be so easy to just change it to "Place all tiles..."
- nikanj 3y agoBecause at Google, you're expected to spend your entire budget
- thaumasiotes 3y agoThere's a "help" popup indicating the existence of keyboard controls. Then, in level two, you have to rotate tiles, for which no control is documented. What gives?
- thegrim000 3y agoOh man I was so confused when I couldn't solve level 2. I even double checked the instructions that there was no rotate key. I'm on a laptop with a nub for a mouse and I'm spamming various keys to try to figure out how to get a piece to rotate and I haven't been successful. I can also select a piece and hit space and it grows in size and goes outside of its box for some reason? Is that relevant to solving puzzles? Or a bug? I guess I won't find out since I can't rotate pieces to progress further ....
- jvmboi 3y agoThe presentation is nice but the content of the puzzle put me off. I think if you suggest a physical puzzle by presenting it as a rolling ball then you should honor correct physical intuition such that a ball isn't going to turn left by itself as it does in puzzle three. I'm interested in testing my wit, and I am fine with losing, but I am not interested in just finding the correct way to clap like a seal for the puzzle designer.
- reportgunner 3y agoAlso the ball starts on a flat surface and then goes uphill(??) in the finish tile.
- matthewfelgate 3y agoThat confused me too. Isn't that literally the wrong way around to how it should be?!
- reportgunner 3y agoI guess we were expected to be astonished that a simple 2D game about connecting lines became 3D in a browser or something.
- achow 3y ago+1 for 3rd level.. the simple solution (as per me) using two tiles does not work, even though the ball reaches the finish podium.
- paulcole 3y agoSeems like you want your wit to be rewarded more than tested?
- jvmboi 3y agoNo, I don't think it wouldn't seem like that to any reasonable person. What makes you say otherwise?
- WilTimSon 3y agoFor a quick, breezy puzzle that you should be able to do within the space of a coffee break, this feels like it moves way too slowly. Takes a bit for the ball to start rolling and the fancy zoom-in animation gets tedious fast.
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- tempoponet 3y ago> the fancy zoom-in animation gets tedious fast Broadly, this criticism applies to nearly all UX.
- coltonweaver 3y agoImpressed that it actually got my M1 Macbook Pro's fans going, lol (Firefox)
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- mtreis86 3y ago[flagged]
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- matthewfelgate 3y agoWhat a frustrating, poorly designed puzzle.
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- brutus1213 3y ago[flagged]
- whalesalad 3y agoChances are Google didn’t make it. They hire a ton of design studios and vendors for stuff like this.
- thrownaway8163 3y agoYou are indeed correct, although a few Googlers typically will help as well with the launch. If I remember correctly the front end JS devs handle most of the site and the puzzle itself is done separate. However, perhaps they changed it up this year. Still a waste of time and money, though.
- brutus1213 3y agoThere is a famous Marissa Meyers party at Yahoo! that this reminds me of. I thought with all the layoffs, Google was getting disciplined and everyone in line. Maybe that is not the case. When Microsoft brought in Nadella, they did some belt tightening as I recall. My understanding is that Meta is using the whip to get everyone focused. So maybe they have a better future? Or maybe G doesn't think they have an existential threat.
- 10xDev 3y agoSeems like this crowd is upset over a children's puzzle game. Thought it was alright, has decent graphics that shows what can be done procedurally without the need of carefully hand crafted assets.
- zamadatix 3y agoSee if being a children's game has any impact on your feelings about Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby then :p. Small Google games are often actually really decent, especially in comparison to this, so I think that's where some of the disappointment comes from. The Doodle Champion Island one was my favorite.
- onion2k 3y agoThere are frustrating implimentation details like puzzles not being solved if you do something that looks obviously right but some subtle unwritten rule means it's wrong. In game design (and all UX really) when something looks right then it should be right. The user shouldn't ever have to think very hard to understand why something is wrong. This game fails in that regard.
- jsnell 3y agoI don't think it was intended to be a children's game; they're not the target market for Google I/O. But also, in this be situation there isn't much positive to be said about the game. Everything about it is badly done. I'm fairly sure the criticisms (vague and badly communicated rules, clunky UI, graphics style that doesn't fit the puzzle, announcing music without a separate music control, way too many slow animations in the wrong places, browser compatibility issues) would be the same if this was a Show HN. It's just that none of it is being given as constructive feedback. But even that makes sense: unlike for a Show HN nobody will be applying the feedback to fix the game. (What I don't get is how this is so high on the frontpage, unless it's just for the schadenfreude.)
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> But also, in this be situation there isn't much positive to be said about the game. Everything about it is badly done. Interestingly, this appears to be completely intentional; the 2023 puzzles have the same problems.
- nolist_policy 3y agoCool, solving the puzzles gives you pleasing designs.
- qwertox 3y agoThat lack of antialiasing is horrible. I'm pretty sure it's not my browser settings because the three.js examples look ok.
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- maupin 3y agoIs one of the rules that you have to use all the puzzle pieces? Because puzzle #3 is easily solved with only two pieces yet that is not the "correct" solution.
- rschiavone 3y agoUnfortunately yes, you have to use every single piece.
- pierat 3y agoAnd that's not explicitly stated. Had the same "problem" too. I would expect better from an adtech/software firm.
- guardian5x 3y agoYes.
- joezydeco 3y agoKind of a good analogy for Google in the 2020s, isn't it?
- opyate 3y agoGetting WASD and Space instructions on mobile too...
- admn2 3y agoWhen did they get the .google domain extension? Don't think I've seen that before
- yau8edq12i 3y agoAbout ten years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.google
- admn2 3y agoThanks! Had no idea
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- TimCTRL 3y agomaybe a gamer recognizes game logic but I can't understand even level 1. I guess I should start playing some games.
- imp0cat 3y agoJust connect the pipes.
- mmsc 3y agoSlightly unrelated but when opening this in private browsing mode, the page displays a warning “you have opened this page in incognito mode …” This is the first time I’ve ever seen a page fingerprint me using private mode and tell me about it
- p0w3n3d 3y agoJust a small notice that Big Brother is disappointed in you :) I wonder how do they detect it, maybe there is no LocalStorage on incognito mode, but TBH it should not be visible to a webpage
- KLejmooo 3y ago"Chrome's FileSystem API is disabled in Incognito Mode to avoid leaving traces of activity on someone's device. Sites can check for the availability of the FileSystem API and, if they receive an error message, determine that a private session is occurring and give the user a different experience."
- mmsc 3y agoThat’s one way, but they would have had to have used multiple solutions depending on the browser.
- xandrius 3y agoAlso had no idea but browsers do seem to leak their incognito state: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2909367/can-you-determine-if-chrome-is-in-incognito-mode-via-a-script https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2909367/can-you-determin...
- stanleykm 3y agothe interface on mobile leaves a lot to be desired
- KLejmooo 3y agoNice little game. Unfortunate my company already declined my request for Google I/O :(
- djexjms 3y agoThings started getting tricky at level 7. I can see that level 8 is solvable, but I'm not going to have time to solve it before leaving for work. Neat little puzzle.
- fergie 3y agoClicking start leads to "Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information)." apart from Safari, which serves me up a frozen game. Console errors complain about "THREE.WebGLRenderer: A WebGL context could not be created. Reason: WebGL creation failed: * tryNativeGL (FEATURE_FAILURE_CGL_FBO) * Exhausted GL driver options. (FEATURE_FAILURE_WEBGL_EXHAUSTED_DRIVERS)" Any tips? Are there magical flags that should be set somewhere?
- pushedx 3y agoI'm on Firefox 123.0.1 on Linux 6.6.19 using Nvidia driver version 550.54.14 and it's working without issues for me. The later levels are really tough!
- bapetel 3y agoare they training Gemini with this puzzle ?
- tromp 3y agoLevel 12 seems to explode with possibilities. Any hints to reduce the search space?
- tromp 3y agoI finally solved it after many rearrangements. As a hint, try making a roundabout in the bottom left...
- sapiogram 3y agoFocus on laying out all the pieces, such that there are no dead ends. There's very few ways to do that, afterwards you can quickly brute-force the rest. The winning move might be to not play, tbh. It was by far my least favorite level.
- ofrzeta 3y agoSpoiler alert: in puzzle #3 what properties does the "track switch" piece have that makes the sphere take the turn instead of going straight on its way back from the bouncer? Doesn't look very physically correct.
- lance6716 3y agothe UI is really a mess, I didn't find there are 5 pieces in mobile...
- flanbiscuit 3y agoThis is neat. Clearly a lot of work has gone into and I appreciate that. It's nice and smooth for me on FireFox (for mac). The music is a nice touch too. For those puzzles with the "reverse" tiles that bounce the ball back, I had to turn off my expectations of where the ball is going to go next. In puzzle 5 you send the ball straight out to a reverse tile and my expectation would be for it to just bounce straight back to the entrance tile, but no... it turns left after that. Just a minor complaint. This is just a fun set of puzzles to announce Google IO, not a game I actually spent money on. Also, they control the world of the game and set the rules. Games are all about learning the rules set by the creator which can often defy expectations.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> For those puzzles with the "reverse" tiles that bounce the ball back, I had to turn off my expectations of where the ball is going to go next. In puzzle 5 you send the ball straight out to a reverse tile and my expectation would be for it to just bounce straight back to the entrance tile, but no... it turns left after that. Just a minor complaint. It's much worse than you make it sound; exactly the same tile layout gets you different results in different places.
- chilling 3y agoI managed to kill the game at the level 12 by creating an inifite loop lol. > THREE.WebGLRenderer: Context Lost.
- axus 3y agoBugs are the fun part, though maybe not the bugs that end the game. Level 11 you can place the minimum number of teleport tiles and lose, but the ball doesn't shatter and finds its way to the next teleporter, turning the color back on.
- LeonM 3y ago> Congrats! You're among the first to solve the puzzle - but the I/O 2024 date will only reveal itself when more players crack the code. Share that you solved the puzzle using the hashtag #io24puzzle. Well... that's disappointing... Edit: when clicking 'continue', it does reveal the date: May 14, 2024
- dr_kiszonka 3y agoNo job interview? : - )
- simonbutt 3y agoWrote a post on multimodal LLMs (GPT-4V, Gemini Ultra, Claude3 Opus) attempting the puzzles at https://hiresynth.ai/blog/googleio_puzzle_multimodal_eval.html https://hiresynth.ai/blog/googleio_puzzle_multimodal_eval.ht.... Seems very easy for humans, far harder for LLMs currently
- chis 3y agoShockingly low quality compared to the sort of stuff Google used to put out. For instance the games they put out in 2010 promoting html5 just showed a way higher level of craftsmanship. To me this really exemplifies how nobody at Google is having fun anymore - someone got assigned this as a task and they did just a solid job, nothing special. Maybe I’m just salty that Google got rid of its coding competitions after 20 years. No fun allowed.