RayLabs
Writing
Daily puzzle games worth your two minutes, how to actually get better at a block puzzle, and the odd note on how this one is built.
Engineering
A block puzzle you can play with VoiceOver
Block puzzles are drag games, and drag games are closed to screen reader users. Here is how O’Block’s board became playable by touch and double tap, and what we did not claim.
Explainer
The game that tells you where you lost
Block puzzles end with a continue offer. O’Block’s Journey ends a lost level with a review: the last move a win was still open from, the piece that would have kept it, and a retry from that move.
Engineering
Every level in the Journey is solvable, and we can prove it
Hand-designed puzzle levels have a failure mode: some of them cannot be won. Here is how O’Block’s 240 levels are generated, vetted, and proved winnable before they ship.
Strategy
How to get better at block puzzle: keep a hole for the 3×3
Most block puzzle runs do not end because of a bad piece. They end because of a move you made eight turns earlier. Five habits that fix that.
Explainer
The week has a shape: stones on Wednesday, a sprint on Friday
Three days of the week change the Daily. Wednesday adds eight stones, Friday cuts you to twenty pieces, Sunday gives you forty. Here is how to play each one.
Explainer
Why every O’Block player gets the same board
One board a day, identical for everyone on Earth, one attempt. Here is how the same board reaches every phone without a server ever sending it.