Welcome, [player], to The Puzzle Palace! To the North-West is the Shifting Puzzles (which you solve by moving stuff around) and a train that will take you around The Puzzle Palace; to the South-East is the Garden of Mazes; and to the North-East is the Chess and Other Puzzles (which has some chess-based puzzles and some puzzles I couldn't categorize). Lastly, to the South-West is the original Puzzle Palace, which shows this dream's humble beginnings (To know more, say "@Old Puzzle Palace"). Some of the puzzles are older versions of puzzles here, and so marked as "Legacy" (say "@Legacy" to know more about that). Enjoy!
I love logic puzzles and mazes, and the first dream I ever truly fell in love with was Tricks For Treats by Graphite, which was a puzzle game created for the Dreamweaving Contest for Wolf Howl 2004 (has it truly been that long?!). I must have solved that game dozens of times until it was taken down; although Graphite archived it on his now-lost website, and I managed to snag a copy.
Another dream he created I absolutely loved was Jujinka’s Playground, his dream for the Jujinka Festival Dreamweaving contest the next year.
In 2008, I started working on my own version of a puzzle-based game called The Puzzle Palace. The first version (which I call Puzzle Palace Mark I never got past the first 5 puzzles, but a second was completed and was uploaded to Furcadia in 2010; and all of the puzzles from that old dream are in this dream in one form or another.
The Puzzle Palace consists of 4 sections with a total of 43 puzzles:
Yep, I’m a sentimental old softie, and my original, never officially uploaded version of the Puzzle Palace has found a home in the dream.
I not only took inspiration from Graphite, but most of my puzzles are based on his; these puzzles have a Graphite Level. The Graphite Levels Are:
There are three types of images in the walkthrough:
From the Puzzle Palace messages themselves
The Legacy Puzzles are puzzles from the old official Puzzle Palace that are present in both in their original and an updated form: Horses Of A Colour II was expanded into Horses Of A Colour Three; To The Center was expanded into To The Centers; and White Horse Amongst Blacks became the more challenging Horses White, Horses Red, Horses Black (Say "@Not Legacy" for puzzles that were changed from Puzzle Palace 2 but aren't amongst the Legacy Puzzles--and why.)
The Cave Maze and The Watchful Horses Two had only their exits changed; nothing else. The Chess Hunt only had the Tapestry and King Switches challenges thrown in; it and The Cave Maze are too large to include twice. The Gate Maze--now The Arrowed Floors--is in the Original Puzzle Palace section (say "@Old Puzzle Palace" for more). Horses Of A Colour I was only changed in orientation and looks.
I’ll explain the Old Puzzle Palace (Puzzle Palace Mark I) when I get to those puzzles.
This train was created by and used with the kind permission of Graphite, who made the sprites for Jujinka's Playground. This will take you to the different sections of the Puzzle Palace.
Jujinka’s Playground was Graphite’s 2005 Spring Festival entry. As I said earlier, his dreams were archived on his site, free to download, and so I did.
When I started work on this dream, I got his blessing to use his train in my dream. The train takes you from station to station, and as you go along, you’ll get a bit of backstory about the Puzzle Palace.
As you ride this train, I'll tell you a bit about the history and influences of this dream. The Puzzle Palace was created as an homage to the dreams made by Graphite, in particular The Puzzler's Mansion (2003), Jujinka's Playground (2004), and Tricks for Treats (2004), as well as eventually a demonstration of what could be done with just the 208 X 200, 7,999 line free dream.
Special Thanks: Mizah, Graphite, and Nommad, who all helped me in their own ways to learn DragonSpeak; Felorin and Emerald Flame for founding and creating Furcadia and DragonSpeak and for their moral support, and to all the Beekins who helped me figure out patching and skinning. Credits: DragonSpeak: Mizah, Nommad, and Mr. Initial Man. Patching: Dragon's Eye Productions (the low, single-rail fences), Graphite (Train), and Mr. Initial Man. Music: Mr. Initial Man. Puzzles: Graphite, Knuckle Cracker LLC, traditional, and Mr. Initial Man.
The first iteration of the Puzzle Palace, which the dates on the files suggest was made back in 2008, was never completed; what little there was is included in this sixth iteration as an homage to the past. The Puzzle Palace that was uploaded for nearly 10 years (March 22, 2010 - Dec. 30, 2018) was the second iteration. During its uptime, it remained unchanged through the advent of Regions, Overlay Effects, DragonSpeak Buttons, the Second Dreaming, and the coming of Lighting and Ambiences. It was even uploaded to the old Challenges dream--during the few times those old upload pads actually worked (sigh...)
The third and fourth iteration, like the first, were never completed, but would lead to the fifth, which was uploaded as Puzzle Quest, in which you had to solve all the puzzles to complete the game (this had been the case in the first iteration, and was sort of part of the second--you had to solve at least half the puzzle to get into the parlour.)
Since I now have a Puzzle Quest, this version does away with the whole quest part. Players are free to try as many or few puzzles as they wish, and in any order. There is no real goal, except to amuse yourself. Though, if you DO want to complete all the puzzles, you should know that there are 13 mazes, 7 Chess puzzles and 4 Miscellaneous puzzles (all in one room), 14 shifting puzzles (including 3 Legacy Puzzles), and 5 puzzles in the Old Puzzle Palace.
A note on the Legacy Puzzles--I'm a bit of a pack rat in both coding and real life, and there were some puzzles that I expanded, and yet wanted to keep in their original forms. These are the Legacy Puzzles; they are noticeably different from their expanded counterparts but still quite recognizable.
There were other puzzles that I altered from those found in Puzzle Palace 2, but most had differences so minor (like a different exit, a different orientation, or a different look) that I decided not to recreate them. In the case of the Chess Hunt--to which I added a scrambled picture challenge to get to the Queen and a search for switches to open a door so you could get the King--it was so HUGE that I simply didn't have the room on a free map--that, and the solution really wouldn't have changed that much. In this case, less is not more.
I mentioned that this puzzle was an homage to the dreams of Graphite. With his blessing, a lot of his old puzzles actually show up here: Teleport Maze Two, The Pillar Maze, White Horse Amongst Blacks, and The Three Herds are different in looks only; The Shifting Statues, Teleport Maze Three, The Coloured Gates, To The Center, and Horses White, Horses Red, Horses Black are almost identical to his, but I threw in extra challenges of my own. To The Centers, The Colour Changing Maze, and Teleport Maze One were heavily based on his old puzzles, but were expanded in some way to make them more challenging. The basic concepts are still his.
I also include a number of classic puzzles: Tower of Hanoi became Numbers Of Hanoi; the Eight Queens Puzzle (along with the puzzles of all other such pieces) are here; one of the mazes is The Knight's Tour--which is possibly the maze with the most solutions (aside from maybe the Chaotic Tiles); and I found a way to code the classic 1980's game Simon, which is here as The Spheres of Simon.. One other puzzle I swiped: The Sequential Switches, which was found as a logic puzzle in the game Creeper World 3.
What puzzles are spins on other games so old I cannot credit anyone (Chess hunt = Treasure hunt, anyone?) or experiments of my own devising (the Binary Adding Machine was fun to create!). I hope you enjoy playing this dream as much as I did making it.
The train has six stations:
Also, you might notice that I call Puzzle Quest the fifth iteration here, but on its own page, as Puzzle Palace Version 2. This isn’t a mistake; it’s the fifth version I made, but only the second to be officially uploaded.
