Welcome to yet another edition of Eets Weekly! I hope you’re all having fun playing Eets. If you haven’t yet, why don’t you give it a try?
This week, I’d like to explain the process in which we created our levels. I’m going to explain why we’re different than most puzzle games, and how we ended up being suitable for a huge range of players!
As you know, Eets features over 100 levels, most of which were designed by yours truly 
. Before creating these levels though, we took a look at other puzzle games and found an interesting trend. The difficulty setting of these puzzle games increased dramatically as the game went along, and it never stopped going up! The result is, a few players would get real kicks out of the super tough levels, and the majority of players only got through 60% of the game. How many of you beat Lemmings from start to end?
We decided that it’s more fun completing levels than it is to get stuck on them, so we grabbed a ton of people to play our game, and tuned each level to be challenging, but completable in a reasonable time. Here is what we end up looking like:
But what about people who want the tough challenge?! Ahhhh, Young Grasshopper, that is one reason we give out trophies to players who don’t use all the items! As this player describes, it gets increasingly difficult to obtain trophies for every level . . . 
A true ninja must get Ninja Skillz on Whale Ninjutsu!
But that’s not all! We also provide new levels every week and support our community to create a whole new variety of levels. Take this wacky fun level, for example, or this harder one.
So, that in a nutshell, is our level-designing philosophy used in making Eets. More fun, less frustration.
Have fun until next week! And don’t forget to visit the Eets Community!
it is a funny picture
Comment by jerry — April 5, 2006 @ 6:18 pm | Edit This
Um… thanks!
Comment by CheesyRamen — April 6, 2006 @ 12:01 am | Edit This
Whaat?? You must indeed be a ninja.
Comment by David — April 6, 2006 @ 7:42 am | Edit This
I saw this game advertising at Penny-Arcade, instantly was attracted to it’s unique look, I ended up downloading the demo.
Straight away ended up posting about this on the forum and no doubt I’ll post about it on the mainpage as something to write about.
Great and smooth game, well done.
Comment by Michael — April 6, 2006 @ 6:11 pm | Edit This
Rock! Michael, if you need a copy for review, just let send us an email.
How’re we doing in terms of our Eets Weeklies? Let us know if there’s something you want us to write about!
Comment by BigFoot — April 6, 2006 @ 10:50 pm | Edit This
Sure I’ll review it and get some publicity your way.
Comment by Michael — April 7, 2006 @ 10:23 am | Edit This
I forgot to show my email, michael@phwonline.com
Comment by Michael — April 7, 2006 @ 10:26 am | Edit This
The ninja skillz are mine! But I am not proud of it.
Comment by Miracle Monkey — April 7, 2006 @ 10:36 pm | Edit This
I totally agree on the puzzle games difficulty graphs. I am probably one of the very few who has completed the Lemmings game, and I think it took me a few years - I would get completely stuck on a level and sometimes it took me a few months to gather strength to get back to it.
The Incredible Machine series on the other hand had a much better difficulty curve - it got tough but never TOO tough. That’s why I like Eets - it’s so much more like TIM than Lemmings difficulty-wise.
Comment by baba — April 11, 2006 @ 2:29 am | Edit This
Gonna have a go of it ocne I’ve had a tug
Comment by Russ — April 12, 2006 @ 1:19 pm | Edit This
baba: Glad you agree with our reasoning! Of course, our game is only one way of tackling this problem. Another way is to provide “Easy, Medium, Hard” paths of puzzles, which many games (including TIM) took.
Anyone have any comments on which you prefer?
Comment by BigFoot — April 15, 2006 @ 12:07 am | Edit This