I'm hopeful that something unanticipated is going to start ratcheting up the progress. And it'll all explode tonight, or something. But regardless of what happens I don't begrudge them what they've done. They've certainly made the period up to release a lot more exciting than it might have otherwise been. They've driven a lot more sales towards a host of Indie games which for the most part deserve the extra attention. They (and the indie devs) have produced an impressive amount of new content that I've enjoyed playing through (except for Amnesia's, because I am a giant baby).
Entriech on
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Jerkbotsome kind of hypnotistRegistered Userregular
edited April 2011
Looking like nothing.
Dammit, we aren't going to get this until tuesday are we.
Maybe I'm imagining it, but a couple refreshes have bumped the bars by a pixel each time.
There is a chance we just activated star power. I dunno though.
Since its almost 9 am on the west coast, i am hoping that Valve will look at the progress after morning coffee and decide to bump it up for an early release tonight.
Sadly deep down i realize that the steady pace we have is what we are going to get.
Does anybody have any tips for Bit.Trip.Beat's Descent Potato? It's starting to irritate me. Its just about the only potato I need and I hate having to waste 15 minutes just to fail. Someone who's done it give me some advice here.
Already sent a letter to Valve saying I won't play their game (with the early release that is) and what a poor gimmick it is to insult their customers with. I'll wait till noon. A few hours is not a reasonable reward. Try a few days.
Priest what did your letter say exactly?
Bedigunz on
Coran Attack!
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
It may have the side effect of burning the community out on future Valve ARGs though
This. To me, it - at this stage - seems more like something a big, clueless studio/developer would do. Basically make people work hard for an advertising pitch. Valve's stuff used to be more clever and indirect. Yes, they were selling the game, but you were never promised, either directly or indirectly, anything more than solving the ARG.
I'm not gonna cry about it or anything, it just isn't what we've come to expect from Valve.
Valve's stuff used to be clever and indirect? This is the second ARG they've done. The first was GlaDOS's pre-boot sequence, which involved radios, a hidden SCTV, and basically was just leading up to the portal 2 announcement. It was small, but creative in the fact that it required a BBS and some pretty arcane technology.
This ARG involved throwing out a "weekend deal" for April Fool's day that lasted 3 weeks. In the process, they involved a handful of developers, coordinated their tweets and messages and multiple game patches, released a shit-ton of unseen concept art, buried messages in spectrographs of sound files, created a glyph/cypher system that could be interpreted multiple ways, told a coherent story, and basically got people to play these games for 3 weeks. Games that Valve had no hand in making, mind you. And Valve made it in only a few months of planning.
No.. The "Bathysphere' puzzle was probably the biggest mistake. Gabe himself released it to drum up hype, and it didn't fit the style of any other puzzles while hinting at something that was slightly off from reality. Everything else pointed towards the boot sequence, with GlaDOS leaving messages in the games she was corrupting/taking over.
Does anybody have any tips for Bit.Trip.Beat's Descent Potato? It's starting to irritate me. Its just about the only potato I need and I hate having to waste 15 minutes just to fail. Someone who's done it give me some advice here.
Make sure you have it set to easy, that helps. Then pay attention to the patterns.
Then you have to get to the boss and then get to MEGA mode, however you do that, I'm not so sure. You have to let some get by you. Then hit the ball behind the boss, so that your ball hits the back wall. It is tough, and it took me quite a few tries, but keep going, and you'll get it. For more, check this.
Icemopper on
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Does anybody have any tips for Bit.Trip.Beat's Descent Potato? It's starting to irritate me. Its just about the only potato I need and I hate having to waste 15 minutes just to fail. Someone who's done it give me some advice here.
Stay mega through the fight. In other words, be really good at playing breakout with a mouse. I got credit for it once I was mega and got a ball into the backrow.
Oh, and play it on Easy, so you can drop down to hyper and restore your mega meter real quick before the boss.
You can start the boss in mega mode, for the record.
Does anybody have any tips for Bit.Trip.Beat's Descent Potato? It's starting to irritate me. Its just about the only potato I need and I hate having to waste 15 minutes just to fail. Someone who's done it give me some advice here.
Stay mega through the fight. In other words, be really good at playing breakout with a mouse. I got credit for it once I was mega and got a ball into the backrow.
Oh, and play it on Easy, so you can drop down to hyper and restore your mega meter real quick before the boss.
You can start the boss in mega mode, for the record.
Also, if your Nether bar is nearly full before the fight, miss a few to intentionally drop down, then work your way back up so you can start the boss with an empty Nether Bar, which gives you some room to maneuver if you miss a few during the boss.
Potatoes make good batteries when you have over over three hundred and seventy eight thousand of them. :P
Fun fact, on average a jumbo potato yields 102 fries (mcdonalds) so that means if instead of powering GLADOS (possibly leading to the rise of the machines) we could have 38,618,934 fries, or a little more than one fry for each Canadian.
Cogs, BTB, and Toki Tori are the ones I am seeing move right now. I'll bet Cogs goes within the next half hour, then Toki Tori about two hours, and BTB shortly after.
I can't be the only one noticing how quickly bars are filling up right now. They are making visible progress in a short period of time.
Are you sure? i am not seeing them fill any faster.
As a person who has been watching this periodically, not having any of the potato sack games, I've had the GLaDOS@Home site open. If you leave it open, wait a few minutes, then click refresh, you'll see the bar go up pretty obviously.
I hadn't seen it like that before.
My guess is that this Overdrive or overclock is in place.
Does anybody have any tips for Bit.Trip.Beat's Descent Potato? It's starting to irritate me. Its just about the only potato I need and I hate having to waste 15 minutes just to fail. Someone who's done it give me some advice here.
Stay mega through the fight. In other words, be really good at playing breakout with a mouse. I got credit for it once I was mega and got a ball into the backrow.
Oh, and play it on Easy, so you can drop down to hyper and restore your mega meter real quick before the boss.
You can start the boss in mega mode, for the record.
Also, if your Nether bar is nearly full before the fight, miss a few to intentionally drop down, then work your way back up so you can start the boss with an empty Nether Bar, which gives you some room to maneuver if you miss a few during the boss.
Your Nether bar will also clear when you go up to Mega. So my best advice is to deliberately drop down to Hyper before getting to the boss, and fill your bar towards Mega most of the way. So ideally you're going into the boss fight with maybe 10 or 15 hits necessary to push you into Mega. You can get those hits in the boss fight, which will move you to Mega, clearing your Nether bar halfway through the boss fight. Then you just have to be mildly good at Breakout and you'll be successful.
Yeah, have to agree with Priest here. This promotion sucks. They established expectations and then failed to meet them. The release isn't going to be meaningfully earlier, all they did was waste my time.
I don't care if a company wants to have a shitty release schedule, that's their right, but don't say or dishonestly imply that it won't be shitty. Be honest and say, "If you guys spend $12 million dollars and jump through a bunch of hopes, we'll release the game a few hours 'early' which is not really that early compared to most early releases (Rift, for example), but whatever."
I'm not really angry, just moderately annoyed, doubly so at the fact someone thought this was a good idea. It wasn't, as implemented anyways. On the plus side, at least some damn good indie devs are making bank off this.
They (and the indie devs) have produced an impressive amount of new content that I've enjoyed playing through (except for Amnesia's, because I am a giant baby).
I disagree, this is probably one of the most interesting and enjoyable marketing strategies in quite some time.
I'm kinda dismayed at all the people in the mindset of 'They wasted my time!' - it doesn't make a lick of sense why anyone should feel that way. Any reasons someone will give for that logic would probably just sound like some prevalent entitlement nonsense going around these days.
I can't be the only one noticing how quickly bars are filling up right now. They are making visible progress in a short period of time.
Are you sure? i am not seeing them fill any faster.
As a person who has been watching this periodically, not having any of the potato sack games, I've had the GLaDOS@Home site open. If you leave it open, wait a few minutes, then click refresh, you'll see the bar go up pretty obviously.
I hadn't seen it like that before.
My guess is that this Overdrive or overclock is in place.
Yeah, have to agree with Priest here. This promotion sucks. They established expectations and then failed to meet them. The release isn't going to be meaningfully earlier, all they did was waste my time.
I don't care if a company wants to have a shitty release schedule, that's their right, but don't say or dishonestly imply that it won't be shitty. Be honest and say, "If you guys spend $12 million dollars and jump through a bunch of hopes, we'll release the game a few hours 'early' which is not really that early compared to most early releases (Rift, for example), but whatever."
I'm not really angry, just moderately annoyed, doubly so at the fact someone thought this was a good idea. It wasn't, as implemented anyways. On the plus side, at least some damn good indie devs are making bank off this.
You know when Valve promised we'd get Portal 2 early?
9 PM PST on Friday. -NO EARLIER-.
We had no ideas what the potatoes gave us. We had no idea what the logins would give us. We were playing because it was a mystery, and maybe to unveil some interesting info about Portal 2 or possibly Half life 2 Ep. 3. The "Potato Two" thing didn't even show up until April 5th. Again, the Bathysphere was the first time any hint of early release was put out there.
And we are getting Portal 2 early, for the record. Hell, we're getting it really early considering how valve time works.
This sense of entitlement shocks me. We all know ARG's are marketing gimmicks, what exactly were you expecting? I had a blast, met some really cool people online, aspire to be Jake_R someday, and in general found myself currently owning a ton more good games than I would've a month ago.
Yes, this execution leaves a bit to be desired, especially if it was valve's intention all along for us to collaborate and push up the bars together (promising something special for getting a golden potato shot that idea in the foot). But the journey's been a hell of a ride.
In fact, the worst part about this promotion is the possibility, however slight, that when that countdown timer hits 0 all the awesomeness in the potato sack will go away. I really do enjoy a lot of this new stuff, and it'd suck if it is locked away.
Seriously though, the fact that they pushed a bunch of indie games with this whole thing endeared me to the concept probably 10000x more than if they had been pushing mainstream developers.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
This sense of entitlement shocks me. We all know ARG's are marketing gimmicks, what exactly were you expecting? I had a blast, met some really cool people online, aspire to be Jake_R someday, and in general found myself currently owning a ton more good games than I would've a month ago.
Yes, this execution leaves a bit to be desired, especially if it was valve's intention all along for us to collaborate and push up the bars together (promising something special for getting a golden potato shot that idea in the foot). But the journey's been a hell of a ride.
And now I have a new hero.
Dark Raven X on
Oh brilliant
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SteevLWhat can I do for you?Registered Userregular
Seriously though, the fact that they pushed a bunch of indie games with this whole thing endeared me to the concept probably 10000x more than if they had been pushing mainstream developers.
Yeah, it was pretty damn cool to see them promote some indie games with this.
I can't really think of any other time where a new game was promoted via other games made by other developers. At the most I've seen stuff like "preorder game X and get game Y for free!" Actually, they also did that since you get the first Portal if you preorder on Steam.
I disagree, this is probably one of the most interesting and enjoyable marketing strategies in quite some time.
I'm kinda dismayed at all the people in the mindset of 'They wasted my time!' - it doesn't make a lick of sense why anyone should feel that way. Any reasons someone will give for that logic would probably just sound like some prevalent entitlement nonsense going around these days.
My reasons are simple: If you say you are going to do something, do it, and to a reasonable extent. Valve suggested we'd be eating cake, and we got a few crumbs instead.
Also, the "it's entitlement, hurr, hurr," dog won't hunt when paying customers are involved. Plenty of people want to argue against their own interests and defend whatever misleading nonsense companies try to pull these days, but they are wrong.
programjunkie on
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
I'm interested in the a postmortem talk with valve and all these devs at GDC.
As am I. I still think it was silly that Dejobaan's games were the hardest when it came to meeting the potato objectives, so much so that the games had to be hacked. I know the catalyst was that you got the potato sack and got 1 2 3 kick it early as a bonus, as kind of the stepping off point of the arg, but still.
You know Valve'll talk about it. What I'm really curious to hear, though, is the sales figures. I know that they don't release those usually, but it'd be awesome to know. After all, 1 2 3 Kick It's bar is probably the best indicator of how many people bought the pack.
I disagree, this is probably one of the most interesting and enjoyable marketing strategies in quite some time.
I'm kinda dismayed at all the people in the mindset of 'They wasted my time!' - it doesn't make a lick of sense why anyone should feel that way. Any reasons someone will give for that logic would probably just sound like some prevalent entitlement nonsense going around these days.
My reasons are simple: If you say you are going to do something, do it, and to a reasonable extent. Valve suggested we'd be eating cake, and we got a few crumbs instead.
Also, the "it's entitlement, hurr, hurr," dog won't hunt when paying customers are involved. Plenty of people want to argue against their own interests and defend whatever misleading nonsense companies try to pull these days, but they are wrong.
Ahh, so your argument is that you bought the potato sack under false pretenses that it'd unlock stuff. Right.
So exactly when did you buy the potato sack, during the ARG's timeline? I bought it when they offered exclusive co-op skins, as I was hoping to get those euro-exclusive ones.
As for half-assing it... Again, I don't see the sheer amount of content and a month-long ARG as being half-assing it. I do know that during the end of phase 1, when the Amnesia guys were struggling with decyphering their puzzles (god Fractional are sadistic), people were saying THEN that the ARG was dragging on, and it'd only been a week at that point! Hell, most of the Portal-themed DLC wasn't even available then.
To me, it just looks like Valve got their math wrong... I would guess they did the numbers for how fast the bars fill up thinking alot more people would be participating and it would finish saturday sometime. It would make sense if they intended to release early that it would be "hey look, you get it this weekend sometime."
Their fault would seem that they dont have anything tweaking the numbers in the background to make it speed up sooner. Overclock possibly now... dunno, but seems a bit late. I would think late friday they should have seen the slow progress and simply increased some numbers.
Either way... a few days early on a game, not the end of the world. The sense of entitlement from gamers is just crazy nowdays. People saying they wont buy it now, or now hate valve... its such a small number of people compared to those who dont really care. Its just that small number of cry babies tend to speak out really loud about it, while those who dont care really dont say anything.
Ive been playing Digital Devil Saga 2 this weekend, so watching this silliness unfold is interesting.
Here's the thing you guys, and I think its part of the "April fools"
The potato's in "potato" batteries dont actually do anything, just allows the zinc to change and go to the lower state. The potato is basically a wire/container.
DiannaoChong on
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
It just looks like they got their math wrong... I would guess they did the numbers for how fast the bars fill up thinking alot more people would be participating and it would finish saturday sometime. It would make sense if they intended to release early that it would be "hey look, you get it this weekend sometime."
Their fault would seem that they dont have anything tweaking the numbers in the background to make it speed up sooner. Overclock possibly now... dunno, but seems a bit late. I would think late friday they should have seen the slow progress and simply increased some numbers.
Either way... a few days early on a game, not the end of the world. The sense of entitlement from gamers is just crazy nowdays. People saying they wont buy it now, or now hate valve... its such a small number of people compared to those who dont really care. Its just that small number of cry babies tend to speak out really loud about it, while those who dont care really dont say anything.
Ive been playing Digital Devil Saga 2 this weekend, so watching this silliness unfold is interesting.
I think it's a case of people just wanting to be mad at Valve. Similar to the announcement of L4D2 and all that. Nowadays I have no clue what content is for L4D and L4D2, and I've gotten quite a bit of enjoyment out of both of them, so.. meh. People just need an evil empire, some windmill to chase. Valve just is the wrong company for that.
I think the best part of this is that I don't think that Valve could have pulled this off with major developers. Inserting this kind of content into the existing games, over so many games, required the kind of agility that only the small indie teams are capable of. Especially because those teams are also not generally hobbled by the same legal restrictions that say, a major developer indebted to a publisher might be.
I would also argue that Dejobaan's games were in no way the hardest. AaaaaAAAaa and TWEOTW were both completely doable with minor effort. 123 kickit was bullshit though, no lie. For my money, Cogs had the hardest potatoes to score. The final puzzle requires 70 correct moves in less than 45 seconds. There is no way I'd have been able to do that without help.
Posts
Dammit, we aren't going to get this until tuesday are we.
There is a chance we just activated star power. I dunno though.
Since its almost 9 am on the west coast, i am hoping that Valve will look at the progress after morning coffee and decide to bump it up for an early release tonight.
Sadly deep down i realize that the steady pace we have is what we are going to get.
Priest what did your letter say exactly?
Coran Attack!
Valve's stuff used to be clever and indirect? This is the second ARG they've done. The first was GlaDOS's pre-boot sequence, which involved radios, a hidden SCTV, and basically was just leading up to the portal 2 announcement. It was small, but creative in the fact that it required a BBS and some pretty arcane technology.
This ARG involved throwing out a "weekend deal" for April Fool's day that lasted 3 weeks. In the process, they involved a handful of developers, coordinated their tweets and messages and multiple game patches, released a shit-ton of unseen concept art, buried messages in spectrographs of sound files, created a glyph/cypher system that could be interpreted multiple ways, told a coherent story, and basically got people to play these games for 3 weeks. Games that Valve had no hand in making, mind you. And Valve made it in only a few months of planning.
No.. The "Bathysphere' puzzle was probably the biggest mistake. Gabe himself released it to drum up hype, and it didn't fit the style of any other puzzles while hinting at something that was slightly off from reality. Everything else pointed towards the boot sequence, with GlaDOS leaving messages in the games she was corrupting/taking over.
Make sure you have it set to easy, that helps. Then pay attention to the patterns.
Then you have to get to the boss and then get to MEGA mode, however you do that, I'm not so sure. You have to let some get by you. Then hit the ball behind the boss, so that your ball hits the back wall. It is tough, and it took me quite a few tries, but keep going, and you'll get it. For more, check this.
Stay mega through the fight. In other words, be really good at playing breakout with a mouse. I got credit for it once I was mega and got a ball into the backrow.
Oh, and play it on Easy, so you can drop down to hyper and restore your mega meter real quick before the boss.
You can start the boss in mega mode, for the record.
Also, if your Nether bar is nearly full before the fight, miss a few to intentionally drop down, then work your way back up so you can start the boss with an empty Nether Bar, which gives you some room to maneuver if you miss a few during the boss.
Are you sure? i am not seeing them fill any faster.
Yep. Told you; we activated star power.
Or Overdrive, if you are so inclined.
... I prefer Overdrive too.
Fun fact, on average a jumbo potato yields 102 fries (mcdonalds) so that means if instead of powering GLADOS (possibly leading to the rise of the machines) we could have 38,618,934 fries, or a little more than one fry for each Canadian.
A potato is about 80% water and 20% solid.
It's like a horse race.
Too bad that AAAAAAAA already won it all....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjqEn7AAq5E
As a person who has been watching this periodically, not having any of the potato sack games, I've had the GLaDOS@Home site open. If you leave it open, wait a few minutes, then click refresh, you'll see the bar go up pretty obviously.
I hadn't seen it like that before.
My guess is that this Overdrive or overclock is in place.
I don't care if a company wants to have a shitty release schedule, that's their right, but don't say or dishonestly imply that it won't be shitty. Be honest and say, "If you guys spend $12 million dollars and jump through a bunch of hopes, we'll release the game a few hours 'early' which is not really that early compared to most early releases (Rift, for example), but whatever."
I'm not really angry, just moderately annoyed, doubly so at the fact someone thought this was a good idea. It wasn't, as implemented anyways. On the plus side, at least some damn good indie devs are making bank off this.
Lime'd for truth.
Amnesia is some scary shit.
Twitch Stream
I'm kinda dismayed at all the people in the mindset of 'They wasted my time!' - it doesn't make a lick of sense why anyone should feel that way. Any reasons someone will give for that logic would probably just sound like some prevalent entitlement nonsense going around these days.
Overpotato
Potatoclock
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
You know when Valve promised we'd get Portal 2 early?
9 PM PST on Friday. -NO EARLIER-.
We had no ideas what the potatoes gave us. We had no idea what the logins would give us. We were playing because it was a mystery, and maybe to unveil some interesting info about Portal 2 or possibly Half life 2 Ep. 3. The "Potato Two" thing didn't even show up until April 5th. Again, the Bathysphere was the first time any hint of early release was put out there.
And we are getting Portal 2 early, for the record. Hell, we're getting it really early considering how valve time works.
This sense of entitlement shocks me. We all know ARG's are marketing gimmicks, what exactly were you expecting? I had a blast, met some really cool people online, aspire to be Jake_R someday, and in general found myself currently owning a ton more good games than I would've a month ago.
Yes, this execution leaves a bit to be desired, especially if it was valve's intention all along for us to collaborate and push up the bars together (promising something special for getting a golden potato shot that idea in the foot). But the journey's been a hell of a ride.
In fact, the worst part about this promotion is the possibility, however slight, that when that countdown timer hits 0 all the awesomeness in the potato sack will go away. I really do enjoy a lot of this new stuff, and it'd suck if it is locked away.
And now I have a new hero.
Yeah, it was pretty damn cool to see them promote some indie games with this.
I can't really think of any other time where a new game was promoted via other games made by other developers. At the most I've seen stuff like "preorder game X and get game Y for free!" Actually, they also did that since you get the first Portal if you preorder on Steam.
My Backloggery
Every single time ordering a new game got you a TF2 hat.
My reasons are simple: If you say you are going to do something, do it, and to a reasonable extent. Valve suggested we'd be eating cake, and we got a few crumbs instead.
Also, the "it's entitlement, hurr, hurr," dog won't hunt when paying customers are involved. Plenty of people want to argue against their own interests and defend whatever misleading nonsense companies try to pull these days, but they are wrong.
As am I. I still think it was silly that Dejobaan's games were the hardest when it came to meeting the potato objectives, so much so that the games had to be hacked. I know the catalyst was that you got the potato sack and got 1 2 3 kick it early as a bonus, as kind of the stepping off point of the arg, but still.
You know Valve'll talk about it. What I'm really curious to hear, though, is the sales figures. I know that they don't release those usually, but it'd be awesome to know. After all, 1 2 3 Kick It's bar is probably the best indicator of how many people bought the pack.
Ahh, so your argument is that you bought the potato sack under false pretenses that it'd unlock stuff. Right.
So exactly when did you buy the potato sack, during the ARG's timeline? I bought it when they offered exclusive co-op skins, as I was hoping to get those euro-exclusive ones.
As for half-assing it... Again, I don't see the sheer amount of content and a month-long ARG as being half-assing it. I do know that during the end of phase 1, when the Amnesia guys were struggling with decyphering their puzzles (god Fractional are sadistic), people were saying THEN that the ARG was dragging on, and it'd only been a week at that point! Hell, most of the Portal-themed DLC wasn't even available then.
Their fault would seem that they dont have anything tweaking the numbers in the background to make it speed up sooner. Overclock possibly now... dunno, but seems a bit late. I would think late friday they should have seen the slow progress and simply increased some numbers.
Either way... a few days early on a game, not the end of the world. The sense of entitlement from gamers is just crazy nowdays. People saying they wont buy it now, or now hate valve... its such a small number of people compared to those who dont really care. Its just that small number of cry babies tend to speak out really loud about it, while those who dont care really dont say anything.
Ive been playing Digital Devil Saga 2 this weekend, so watching this silliness unfold is interesting.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The potato's in "potato" batteries dont actually do anything, just allows the zinc to change and go to the lower state. The potato is basically a wire/container.
I think it's a case of people just wanting to be mad at Valve. Similar to the announcement of L4D2 and all that. Nowadays I have no clue what content is for L4D and L4D2, and I've gotten quite a bit of enjoyment out of both of them, so.. meh. People just need an evil empire, some windmill to chase. Valve just is the wrong company for that.
I would also argue that Dejobaan's games were in no way the hardest. AaaaaAAAaa and TWEOTW were both completely doable with minor effort. 123 kickit was bullshit though, no lie. For my money, Cogs had the hardest potatoes to score. The final puzzle requires 70 correct moves in less than 45 seconds. There is no way I'd have been able to do that without help.