Game:

Lumines: Puzzle Fusion (2004)

Duration: 0:49

57 views

1

---

Puzzle Mode
Puzzle 22: Big Checker

Huh... and now we've backed up again to the simpler generic geometric formations. Are we traveling backwards through the playlist on our newly advanced level?

To be excessively fair, there are two ways of looking at this one... for one thing, the Small Checker is right there and we've only added four more tiles on each of the cardinal edges of the formation, so it's not actually all that difficult. That said, how they've been added is probably the least construction-friendly way possible, requiring a key tile in the center of a filler line to elevate the original Small Checker as well as side fillers to put the new squares on the outside into place.

Still, it's the same principle as seen in the early puzzle along the same theme, and the idea is still to make the absolute "worst" layout you can ever inflict upon yourself in Lumines. The thing about checker patterns is, however, that once you start making one... it just tends to keep growing, since you can't immediately clear anything trapped inside a checkered section, and additional layers of checkering will just build up if you're not careful.

The good thing about this puzzle is that your filler can also be checkered, since that will remain perfectly within the "no touching" rules and increase the overall solution-friendly area on the board... y'know, should you mess up one side or the other. Although obviously if you've "broken" a checker, that leaves you with a clearable section of the board again, so you can feasibly begin anew.

So... it's a complicated formation, particularly if you expand it out over a larger area, but I think that while checkering is very bad for normal play, it's something that only gets "easier" to build with for this puzzle as you sink in deeper.

...and I've gone on way too long into the theory of checkering when the video running time is remarkably short, meaning I didn't have to use any of that in order to arrive at my own solution.

Well! How do you like that? The nerve of some people!

Other Statistics