As I go deeper into the penultimate stage of Lineon development (which I define as the period in which all the mechanics are down, I just need to guide the damn book towards its finished first draft form) I'm discovering new issues to address. Currently, the main issue is the difficulty.

I have the chapters worked out - I know the book will have 6 chapters, each with 10 puzzles, each introducing a new mechanic, plus 2 shorter chapters (an interlude and an epilogue), each with 5 puzzles. There will also be around 20 secret puzzles hidden in the various parts of the book, but they aren't important for this post.

Since a new mechanic is introduced in each chapter, it is only sensible to use the new mechanic as much as possible in the chapter's 10 puzzles. For example, the Void Points are introduced in the third chapter, so of course the puzzles of the third chapter should include Void Points, right?

But there is another thing I must consider when making puzzles, on top of making sure a puzzle fits into the theme and structure of a certain chapter - how a puzzle fits into the pacing of the whole book. You see, I made a LOT of puzzles during the development and some are, I think, beautiful. I love them and I want to include them. But if they use only the basic mechanics, they fit into the beginning of the book, and if they fit into the beginning of the book, they should be easy. This of course isn't always the case. So, what I'm left with is a bunch of puzzles I really like but can't include because of their difficulty, unless I dumb them down and hope they don't lose their essence.

The structure of the book is proving itself to be extremely restrictive and I don't think I can change that. Having very defined chapters is also a step towards having an easier experience with the book - you at least know how to approach a certain puzzle, because the whole chapter is built around a mechanic. If the mechanics would be all over the place, you would have to shift you mind gears into too many directions at once. It would be tiring.

Another difficulty-related problem I have is, I sometimes simply don't know how difficult a certain puzzle is. Of course everybody solves puzzles with their own specific approach and some people will fare better with some puzzles than others. But still, I'm understanding more and more that each puzzle must somehow be a tutorial for the next puzzle, and so on. And the correct order is quite difficult to pin down, because I'm not sure what will people in large perceive as easy or not (haha, as if people in large will know about this book). I'm really in awe of my favorite puzzle creators, because this is an artform that's just crazy difficult to perfect.

Well, I still think I'm on a right track. It's just a process of defining problems, solving them, tightining everything up every day. I predict it will take me about 4 months to push the book into the version 1.0 territory. We'll see :) If you wish to be a part of the private playtesting process, hit me up! Here's my mail: blazgracar@gmail.com