I think this illustrates one of the biggest reasons many of the most popular mobile games have variable solutions and some sort of "star" rating for the soluti

I think this illustrates one of the biggest reasons many of the most popular mobile games have variable solutions and some sort of "star" rating for the solution. A lot of these games work on the idea that people ripping through it achieve the 1 star solution and go to puzzle 2. It has a "secondary" or "advanced" mode built right in for the person who wants to get 3 stars on each. Common things to grade with stars: Speed fewest 'widgets' to solve total 'impact' (Think damage a la angry birds) etc. We can also combine these sorts of things in the rating system. There is a great game, "Cargo-Bot", that is essentially a programming game. The rating system there only takes into account the number of instructions used but it could do something where it takes into account the number of instructions used and the run time of the "program" produced. I guess my point is, designing games with singular solutions is probably cheating the gamer out of some additional fun (go back and finish on hard) and cheating the designer out of exploring some interesting concepts around "scoring".