Green Revomaze

I got a chance to try out the Green Revomaze, courtesy of John Devost's puzzle library over at RenegadePuzzlers.ca. This is the second puzzle in the series of five. Check out my blog entry about the Blue Revomaze for more information about this series of puzzles.

The Green Revomaze is a bit harder than the Blue version, and incorporates an interesting feature that took me a little while to overcome. I explored the beginning of the maze for a while, but it seems like no matter where I went there was a trap! I was stuck at this point for a while until I discovered the way to proceed. Like with the Blue Revomaze, I had this revelation right after I woke up: perhaps I do my best puzzling early in the morning!

I found the next part of this maze to be somewhat less enjoyable: remember in my previous entry when I mentioned that it would be really annoying if you needed to cross a long winding bridge with traps on both sides? Well, there is one in this puzzle. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying this since you can't really help but notice it while solving it (there is no a-ha moment), but let me know if you feel differently.

Interestingly, this wasn't quite as annoying as I had anticipated: you can sort of feel when you are about to fall off if you move very slowly, so that helped me quite a bit. Still, it is not a feat that I could reproduce 100% of the time. Perhaps with practice I could get good at it, but even now I'd probably succeed much less than 50% of the time. I really hope that the next puzzles in the series aren't like this, because is could be extremely difficult/annoying!

Overall, though, I would say that this is a solid puzzle that is worth getting. In terms of difficulty, this is quite a challenging puzzle: it took me about 3-4 hours to solve it. Some folks who prefer shorter solve times may be put off by the long solve times in this series, but so far I have really enjoyed these puzzles. Since you have a sense of progress when you succeed in exploring further than you were previously able to, these puzzles grip my attention quite a bit more than many others.

I look forward to seeing what the Bronze will be like. I read that the Blue is like a trainer to build your understanding of how these puzzes work, the Green has a few tricks thrown in to build upon Blue, and the Bronze is really a whole new evolution of this type of puzzle. I agree with most people's advice that you should try the Blue before the Green, but it isn't necessary. The Blue is a bit more straightforward than the Green, but it is still a definite challenge worth trying to conquor.

In my previous post I had complained a bit about how my hand got sore when playing with these puzzles, and I think I experienced less of it this time around now that my hand is getting stronger and more accustomed to navigating a Revomaze. I find that I am most productive when I work in sessions of 30-60 minutes. Much more than that and the fatigue causes me to make mistakes, which is very frustrating and counterproductive.

Sorry I have been a bit slow on the updates recently: my computer's hard drive failed and I have been busy restoring things, and I've also been pretty busy over the holidays. Lots more reviews coming up: some hexagonal puzzles from John Devost (once I finish solving them...), my three Karakuri Club Christmas presents, and a few presents I got from my family from Bits and Pieces.