Feedback on the difficulty of the different modes

SomeRandomHEFan

For the purpose of improved balancing, I thought it could be useful to gather our opinions on how challenging the game's various modes are.

Note that I'm currently on Level 7 still in the middle of my first run, though I don't expect to survive Level 8 at the rate things are going. My descriptions are generally based on my most recent experiences with these modes, so don't be mislead into thinking it was always this hard for me. I was doing fairly well a few levels ago. I think I'm starting to approach the limit most players are expected to achieve, so almost every mode poses a challenge to me now.

Also note that I don't remember all the official names for the modes, so I'll refer to them by their Chuzzles instead.

Chuzzlemama mode isn't very difficult, though that's probably because I don't think any instance of it has been harder than "Fairly Easy" so far. Due to its infrequency and relative lack of challenge, along with the fact that it's not really that different from red Chuzzle mode, I don't have much to say about it.

Red Chuzzle mode is probably a bit harder than the average mode for me. Though locks don't spawn at a terribly high rate, the fact that every match fills the lock meter means their overall quantity is quite high, regardless of how well I'm performing. Though I can deal with most of the locks fairly quickly due to the lack of gimmicks, it's not uncommon for things to gradually spiral out of control when they spawn in tricky locations. Having said that, things still don't become helpless as quickly as in some of the other modes. I think what irritates me the most about this mode is its very high frequency. It's the most vanilla mode out there, so it gets repetitive pretty quickly when I have to play it so often.

Yellow Chuzzle mode is fairly manageable. As long as I make sure to minimize non-uncovering matches, I can uncover most of the gold with very few locks. Things do get trickier when there are only a few covered tiles left, but I think I could make this phase easier by making sure to prioritize uncovering the bottom rows. When things aren't going as smoothly, this is where the locks typically pile up.

Green Chuzzle mode is the easiest by virtue of having no fail condition. Though I don't always figure out a quick and elegant solution, I can still gradually beat levels I struggle with slowly and awkwardly instead. It should be noted that this mode spawns pretty infrequently for me though. I always go for it unless there's no point, yet I don't think I ever had a level with a difficulty above "Sorta Hard".

Due to my poor performance with other speed-based modes, I tend to avoid orange Chuzzle mode as well. Although the one time I was forced to play it at a high difficulty went surprisingly okay. I occasionally encounter a situation where I can't find any match for extended periods of time. While this is lethal for the purple and orange-red Chuzzle modes, it only penalizes me with one lock wave here, so I can handle it better. (For those unaware, you are free to wait as long as you want after locks spawn. Nothing will happen if the lock meter fills again before you make another move. As such, you should always time your next move with the point where the lock meter is empty.) The overall score requirement seems a bit low compared to red Chuzzle mode, so I think I should play this mode more frequently.

Cyan Chuzzle mode is somewhat luck-dependent, but usually goes well. If I can clear a few of the initial locks quickly, I can often keep up with the lock spawn rate and eventually clear them all.

The same goes for blue Chuzzle mode. The lack of both locks (prior to running out of moves) and time pressure means I usually get better matches than normal here. If I get enough, or get lucky with a long combo or a six Chuzzle match, I win.

Stunt Chuzzle mode isn't too hard, but very tedious. It often takes me a really long time to beat it, but the lock spawn rate doesn't seem to be all that high, so I can usually hold on long enough.

My performance in Mystery Chuzzle mode has been too inconsistent to really tell how hard I find it. Given the way it works, its duration is obviously pretty luck-based. I often lose track of what colors I already attempted when I start to run out of options, so if I don't get the right color fairly quickly, I often end up only clearing a Mystery Chuzzle either by accident, or by Bomb. I can't survive all that long though, so it's not uncommon for such a scenario to end in a loss instead.

Rainbow Chuzzle mode is a complete gamble for me. Either I manage to clear the rainbow Chuzzles within a few moves, or a lock gets in the way, and as I prepare to remove it, the flood of additional locks crushes any possibility of retrieval, guaranteeing defeat not long after.

Purple Chuzzle mode is a huge challenge. I already mentioned my occasional blockades earlier, and a single one of them is usually enough to ruin my current attempt in this mode. The one thing that keeps it just barely playable for me is the lack of locks prior to running out of time, which makes such blockades less frequent than normal. I can only beat this mode when I'm really concentrated and lucky.

I avoid orange-red Chuzzle mode like the plague. It was already challenging for me on lower difficulties, and is basically impossible now. Not only are blockades just as punishing here as in purple Chuzzle mode, but locks are pretty frequent, and can't be prevented from spawning. Combined with the small playing field making locks more harmful than usual, and the fact that victory requires not just survival but quick and good matches, this mode is completely beyond my skill. Thankfully, it's also very rare.

Finally, Surprise Chuzzle mode is probably the third-hardest. It's somewhat similar to yellow Chuzzle mode, but there are two factors that make it much harder. For starters, even matches with Surprise Chuzzles still fill the lock meter if they also include normal Chuzzles. As such, locks spawn far more frequently past the beginning. Also, the position of the remaining Surprise Chuzzles changes all the time, so it's not easy to prevent at least a few from getting surrounded by locks.

Raptisoft

Hey, thanks for this excellent write up.  I find your experience pretty good-- the game itself is designed to mostly let people avoid levels they don't like (either with bonuses to skip them, or just by going around them on the big map).  The only glaring red flag I see here is that "Stunt Chuzzle is tedious."  I'll play around with it a little bit to see if I can make it less tedious while keeping the general feel.

Oh, and I'll reduce the Red Chuzzles a bit as well.  Originally, they were over-represented because I knew there would be people who just want to play Normal Classic Chuzzle, and the idea was to give them, more or less, a clear path straight to the goal where they could just play Classic Chuzzle.  However, since I added Classic and Zen into the game, that point is moot.

May I inquire: Have you gotten all the puzzle pieces, and if so, approximately how long did it take you?

SomeRandomHEFan

I'm still pretty far away from getting all the puzzle pieces. Only retrieved a money bag and two Chuzzles from them so far. Since I sent you my save file yesterday, you can see my exact progress there.

After making this post, I had my first go at a "Very Hard" Stunt Chuzzle level and gave up after one try. I can create four Chuzzle formations with a lot of patience, but the required five Chuzzle one was completely beyond me. All I was able to do was create the two four Chuzzle formations, endlessly try and fail to gather lots of Chuzzles of a single color in the hope that I might be able to arrange them correctly, and remove the occasional lock. I think I managed to survive for about 15 minutes before I finally got a few locks I couldn't deal with quickly enough and was gradually overwhelmed. This is longer than I can usually last even in Red Chuzzle mode. Perhaps some players can plan ahead far enough to create formations without having to rely as much on luck, but this mode is virtually unplayable for me at this difficulty.

For the record, the formation I was asked for was:

OOO

XXO

XXO

From my experience, this is a particularly difficult five Chuzzle formation. I can occasionally form some others, but I don't recall ever getting one in this shape.

In a nutshell, my problems with this mode are:

#1: Any three Chuzzle formations are really easy, some four Chuzzle formations take me forever, and some five Chuzzle formations are next to impossible for me.

#2: Lack of tension due to low lock spawn rate.

I actually spent some time thinking how I would design a mode like this. If you're curious, this is what I came up with:

Victory is achieved by filling a bottle like in various other modes, but normal matches don't fill it. Instead, players are presented with four different formations, one with three Chuzzles, one with four, one with five, and one with six. Any Chuzzles arranged in such a formation fill the bottle.

However, harder formations fill it much more quickly. On higher difficulty levels, it would take quite a while to fill it with the three Chuzzle formation alone. Larger formations fill the bottle exponentially quicker. For example, if the first formation fills it by ~2%, the second one fills it by ~25%, the third by ~50%, and the six Chuzzle formation always grants instant victory due to the insane difficulty of achieving it.

But the exact rate at which a formation fills a bottle depends not just on its size, but also its exact shape and orientation. Not all formations of a specific size are equally easy to get, so there is some deviation. One of the easiest four Chuzzle formations fills the bottle somewhat less than one of the hardest would, for instance.

To further encourage players to aim for the bigger formations, they get significantly more bonus points for larger and harder formations.

Finally, in order to add to the tension, the lock meter fills fairly quickly, but is emptied whenever a target formation is achieved, similar to how Cyan Chuzzle mode rewards removing locks.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Yellow Chuzzle mode. My new strategy of always fully uncovering the bottom rows as quick as I can makes this mode really easy. I was able to beat a "Very Hard" level with only a single lock. I also won all of my other attempts without much trouble, though those levels had a lower difficulty. If you compare it to Surprise Chuzzle mode (which is starting to approach impossible territory for me), then the two key differences between the two (which I already mentioned in my previous post) make the former much easier.

I also played two levels of the new Angel Chuzzle mode so far. The "Easy" one went much like my average attempt at Stunt Chuzzle mode: Really long-winded, yet largely devoid of danger. The "Medium" one actually took me significantly less time. It could just be dumb luck, but I have a suspicion it isn't. I didn't pay attention to this, but do you increase the color variety on higher difficulties in this mode as well? Because I think this could actually make it easier. After all, it reduces the rate at which new chosen Chuzzles spawn. It's too early to give you a definitive verdict on my opinion on this mode, though. I wasn't able to come up with a real strategy so far, but perhaps trying to create a six Chuzzle formation followed by a chain explosion could do the trick.

On another note, I got my first "Medium" Chuzzlemama level when I entered Level 7. (I was actually on Level 6 when I wrote my previous post.) It was actually surprisingly difficult for a level of this difficulty. Took me ~4 tries. Though part of the reason for this was because I had not yet formed a proper strategy for it before. Now that this mode has become a genuine challenge, I'm starting to see the finer details of how it differs from Red Chuzzle mode. It adds an interesting layer of strategy when you have to restrict yourself as much as possible to only five colors, and also have to try and use them in roughly even quantities to avoid clearing certain colors too early. So it seems like a pretty fun mode now that there are plenty of penalty colors. I'd maybe consider reducing the number of desired colors by one on the low difficulty levels in order to avoid rewarding players for almost every available color. I feel that this mode doesn't really work with only a handful of penalty colors.

Finally, one thing I find rather cruel in Mystery Chuzzle mode is when a lock spawns on a Mystery Chuzzle itself. For obvious reasons, this makes things much harder. Perhaps on "Prohibitive" difficulty, giving the player a pre-locked Mystery Chuzzle could make for an interesting way to spice things up, but forcing players to deal with this on lower difficulties when they're unlucky strikes me as pretty unfair.

kudos

Deleted.

SomeRandomHEFan

Currently on Level 8.

I appreciate the reduction of red Chuzzles. Certainly adds more variety, especially in the narrow corridors where I used to get loads of them.

Two more levels of Angel Chuzzle mode have only affirmed my suspicion that this mode's difficulty levels have the reverse effect. There was one "Hard" level I beat after about 15 moves without breaking a sweat. The other level's difficulty was somewhere between "Sorta Hard" and "Very Hard". It took me three moves to win it. A larger color variety really does seem to make this mode much easier.

Also played two more Stunt Chuzzle levels, both of which had two four Chuzzle formations. One of them took me about as long as an average level of this mode, while the other went a bit quicker. Haven't really noticed much of a difference so far. If I have an opportunity, I'll give another "Very Hard" level a shot later.

It seems "Very Hard" Yellow Chuzzle levels don't always go quite as well as the one I mentioned in my previous post. Still, this mode doesn't seem to pose much of a challenge to me.

I have pretty detailed feedback regarding Green Chuzzle mode, but don't have the time to share it right now. Just leaving this here as a reminder for myself.

Against all odds, I managed to win a "Hard" Orange-Red Chuzzle level. But I think I mostly just got lucky. I was struggling to find a move when the ChuzzOS suddenly ran out of moves with only ~4 locks.

Finally, even though I can normally beat "Very Hard" Red Chuzzle levels at a semi-consistent rate, I encountered one that proved to be absolutely brutal. A single match with three Chuzzles was enough to fill its lock meter all the way. While this mode is indeed pretty fond of spawning locks, I don't recall ever encountering such a crazy spawn rate in it before. In my three attempts, I didn't even come close to victory (I think I filled the bottle by about 66% on my best attempt), and ultimately had to use a heart bonus.

PurpleNecromancer10

I found the ChuzzOS battles fun though definitely not too easily.

You can save up Locks for the opponent instead of spending right away, up to 4 locks at a time and no more. 

But on harder difficulties, you do sometimes have to lock early and at the right time (while the opponent is in the middle of a move) to get ahead.

Rainbowmon

Isn't Chuzz-Os supposed to be plural? Like, isn't the s supposed to be lowercase? Because I could be absolutely sure it was before in the game (unless my eyes fooled me), and if so, I think you might have just made an unintentional pun (since OS stands for Operating System, which is what every computer-like device runs on, and the Chuzz-Os are controlled by an AI from our perspective, which, if they were in fact AI robo-chuzzle in-universe, would mean they likely have some sort of OS, likely named Chuzzle OS, or Chuzz-OS for short, and also their name). I find this to be hilarious.

Sorry for being slightly off-topic, but I wanted to share this thought, and wasn't sure of a better way of posting it.

SomeRandomHEFan

Don't remember for sure how it's written, but I always thought it was supposed to be a pun on iOS. It makes sense in a way, seeing how your opponent is an AI.

SomeRandomHEFan

At the beginning of my play session today, I had to deal with three consecutive absolutely brutal "Very Hard" Chuzzle in chains levels. One of them had such an evil starting layout that my survival past the first moves appears to have been completely dependent on RNG. One attempt literally ended after two moves. Furthermore, the lock spawn rate in all three of them was crazily high. I must have lost 8-9 times before I finally beat these levels, and I'm still amazed I actually did. Seeing how a bug had screwed me out of my bonuses, I fully expected to die here.

Combined with various other brutal levels I encountered, I'm starting to suspect that the lock spawn rate has recently increased even on lower difficulties. I've been dealing primarily with levels in the "Sorta Hard" to "Very Hard" range for a while now, yet I'm starting to encounter lock-related situations I don't remember ever experiencing before. Like Speed Chuzzle spawning two locks at once, or one lock when I didn't make any moves since the last wave. Or Prismatic Chuzzle spawning locks after every single move.

Not every level was this hard, though. I actually managed to beat a "Prohibitive" Stunt Chuzzle level, thanks to it only asking for three four Chuzzle formations. The two "Chuzzle Rapture" levels were also once again short and simple. And the high lock spawn rate doesn't matter all that much in Sun Chuzzle, thanks to my strategy resulting in relatively few non-uncovering matches, combined with the fact that individual locks are less harmful on a large board.

SomeRandomHEFan

Finally got a game over on Level 9 after accumulating for losses from a Bottle-Up! level or a Chuzzle in chains level. I'm pretty sure both of them were merely "Hard", but the lock spawn rate was just too much to handle.

Started a new run with Advanced difficulty. Not much to say so far, except that the one Sun Chuzzle level I played wasn't really any easier than the later ones I'm accustomed to. I think it's because the smaller board causes this mode's small amount of locks to be somewhat more problematic. I'd suggest giving the number of locks per wave a slight boost on higher difficulties.

Also player two Chuzzle Rapture levels. One of them was as easy as usual (though this was the point here, since its difficulty was "Easy"), while the other one ("Medium") was moderately challenging, due to several locks getting in the way, and chosen Chuzzles spawning in small pockets. I ultimately solved it by clogging up the board a little with a non-chosen fat Chuzzle, and matching six Chuzzles to set up a chain explosion. Definitely one of the better experiences I've had with this mode so far.

SomeRandomHEFan

Noticed some weird typos in my previous post. That's what I get for writing it just before going to sleep.

The first sentence was supposed to say "Finally got a game over on Level 9 after accumulating four losses from a Bottle-Up! level and a Chuzzle in chains level."

SomeRandomHEFan

I managed to beat a "Very Hard" Stunt Chuzzle level on my first try, in spite of it having two five Chuzzle formations. I'm still not quite sure how I accomplished that. Think it was mostly just luck.

I also had to deal with a truly insane Bottle-Up! level. Like a certain "Very Hard" level of this mode I mentioned earlier, its lock bar was completely filled up by every single move I made, meaning I got one or two new locks every second move. Additionally, its bottle required a huge amount of Chuzzles. It took me six tries until I finally had an attempt that gave me amazing RNG and allowed me to consistently eat locks like a boss. Prior attempts had some parts that went also really well, but that alone just wasn't enough to even make it over the 50% mark. All it took to lose was a brief period without clearing many locks. While I'm sure a real expert could've performed somewhat better, even they would've probably struggled to keep up with such an insane flood of locks.

SomeRandomHEFan

Narrowly managed to beat a "Prohibitive" Chuzzle Surprise level. Took me five tries. I usually got pretty far by being making sure to evacuate the remaining Surprise Chuzzles from the bottom area when the point neared where vertical moves become impossible, but there were several occasions where a single one of them didn't make it out in time and got buried. It was fun coming up with desperate strategies to clear some immobilized Surprise Chuzzles, but the overall difficulty was still a bit too high for its own good. I noticed another reason why this mode is harder than Sun Chuzzle, though this one is probably not as significant. Namely, that you can't create Super Chuzzles using matches that consist only of Surprise Chuzzles. And I'm not sure if mixed matches work either. I almost never seem to get any Super Chuzzles here. It was disappointing that I didn't get any reward for matching six Surprise Chuzzles.

One thing I generally don't quite understand about the game is how the lock bar works in modes other than Speed Chuzzle. I was under the impression that whenever it peaks, it waits one more move, then spawns locks and becomes completely empty again. To take advantage of this, I occasionally time a particularly good move with the point where the lock bar is full in order to ensure all the Chuzzles this move clears won't fill it. But if the move triggers a long combo, the lock bar either partially refills itself immediately, or spawns an extra large amount of locks. Is this a penalty for trying to overfill the lock bar? I thought I came up with a pretty clever strategy that rewards skillfully timing your good moves, so I don't think I deserve to be penalized for that.

Furthermore, there are a few modes that give you a way to empty the lock bar before activation. This is particularly notable and helpful in Chuzzle in chains, where all it takes to do that is clear a lock. However, the game isn't entirely consistent in how it handles this. Normally, the emptying happens after all your other matches of this move fill the lock bar, effectively making the move a freebie. But during combos, there are occasions where the emptying happens before all the other matches have done their thing, causing the lock bar to end this move partially filled. I think I even recall instances where I got a lock wave from an emptying move. This probably has to do with some complex timing logic, but it makes it difficult to form effective strategies for Chuzzle in chains, where it's absolutely crucial to keep lock spawning to an absolute minimum.

Considering how crazy the lock spawn rate can get after a while, strategies like this are a necessity in order to prevent the late game of various modes from becoming a pure RNG fest, so I'd appreciate if the game were more transparent about how the lock bar works. I know that a lot of the more casual players value a healthy dose of RNG in their matching games, but just because you give people the ability to occasionally win levels largely through luck doesn't mean you can't also reward more strategic players with more consistent victories if they truly put in the effort.