A note from the author on Murdoku's difficulty

Hey everyone,

There have been a lot of posts about the books' difficulty recently. Difficulty is very tricky to calibrate, there's suuuch a wide range of possible skill levels when it comes to logic games. Every day, there's someone asking me for harder puzzles and someone else asking me for easier ones.

Here are my thoughts, explaining my general design approach when it comes mostly to the books:

• I want people to have their money's worth, and it's not very satisfying when someone can finish the whole book in a few hours. I became fond of these 12x12 grids for this reason, and they can still go from medium to expert. The expert puzzles are meant to take a very long time to solve, but there's always the option to peek at the solution to speed up the process, which I believe is fine.
• Generally speaking, I don't think a game being difficult is a big issue, as long as 1. it feels fair, and 2. the game accompanies the player in building up their skills. In the case of puzzle games, this means 1. explaining every step of the solution clearly, so you know what went wrong, and 2. teaching some of the most advanced logic tricks to improve. I think there's still room for improvement on both points.
• Speaking of fair: there are a few puzzles whose logic relies on thinking three steps ahead , "if A is here, then B is here, then C is here, and D cannot be anywhere", and this seems to be where many people start to feel like it's unfair. Note taken. Thinking one step ahead (if A is here, then B can't be there) and even two steps is fundamental, but now I try to be careful about designing any solution that goes too deep down a rabbit hole like that.

Finally, two tips:

• It's perfectly fine to get stuck on a puzzle, move on to another one, then come back to it with a fresh mind. Chances are you'll notice something you didn't the first time.
• Even for the most difficult puzzles, almost all logic relies on the principles mentioned in the Advanced Tips section, sometimes just in a more elaborate form, but the core idea stays the same. (For example, if A and H are in C1 and C9 in any order, then no one else can be in C1 or C9.)

Because this is such a new game concept, I try to make the difficulty very broad to hopefully please all types of readers, which is just impossible. If this game someday becomes widely popular, I could imagine eventually more books aimed at casual players and others aimed at experts.