The NOVA puzzle tutorials we have long been waiting for, has just gone active. You can test them out at the NOVA lab site. They will be integrated in our side of the game later too.
He also pointed out that the account option is for US only. But if you are not in the US, like me, you can pick the option Guest.
Feel free to try out the tutorials and help expose if there are any bugs left. Please report here if you find any.
Update: If you are playing on a guest pass, it won’t save your progress when you log out and log back on again. You can make an account with an artificial zip code. 10001 for New York works for me.
For me, mousewheel works to zoom in/out but also scrolls the whole page. Win8.1 Chrome (latest version). Additionally, I either can barely fit or can’t fit the whole game area into my screen (Chrome, regular zoom, 15.6")
Is there any way for me to get points on my EteRNA account from the labs?
That’s a good point. We’re looking to see if there’s a way to prevent painting there. The puzzle does currently instruct people to use the undo button if they accidentally paint that base, but that’s far from ideal.
We’re discussing with the Eterna team whether we can give Eterna players points instead of just carrying them over into a new account. Good to know that you want them!
“Boosting multiloops is different than normal loops, right?” < – this is why it doesn’t fit in that particular tutorial. Turn the adjacent pair and suddenly the boost is not boosting, or is even raising the energy, depending on surrounding shapes. To teach it requires its own lesson
I actually had exactly that in an early version of the game-- a puzzle dedicated to teaching multiloops. Play-testers were confused by it though, and it resulted in them being more confused about boosts in general (it was just too much information too quickly, so it didn’t make the final cut).
It sounds like the consensus is that the mutliloops in this puzzle should be locked down/not pointed to as a boost point, is that right? The confusing I’m trying to avoid is players then assuming that multiloops can’t be boosted at all. To RedSpah’s point, maybe that’s a better thing than them trying to boost incorrectly.
Agreed that blocking would have been useful, but it’s one of those things I just wasn’t able to fit in, unfortunately. If we ever make a sequel maybe I can get that in there
Just to put this out there- the NOVA game is not by any means meant to replace all of the excellent guides that players have written over the last few years. My hope is that those will continue to be a great resource as players get further immersed in Eterna.
