enclose.horse

[gorgoiler]

Great game, I love it! I hope the author is collecting juicy analytics. They would be useful if they ever want to bundle 100 levels in order of difficulty and release this as a Steam game (which I would absolutely buy!)

I don’t think the gates should animate up into the air. It breaks the visual logic of 2D for no benefit. It’s subconsciously confusing to see a gate I place in one cell move to occupy pixels in the cell “above” it.

I look forward to future days introducing new mechanics as well. Can I suggest a few, based on dynamics?

- Food! The horse moves on every turn towards an attractor. Have a hay bale / giant sugar cube in one corner fall off the back of a truck / helicopter :) Horses start out dumb and move directly towards the goal before backtracking. Smarter horses path find the shortest route to the goal.

- Goals! Now that the horse is moving, get the horse into a static horse box / cattle pen cell by strategically placing fences so that the path it takes towards the food involves walking onto the goal square.

- Floods! Water encroaches from the edges on a turn by turn basis. Not only do you have to contain the horse, you also have to hold back the flood.

[anticorporate]

> I hope the author is collecting juicy analytics.

I hope they're not. Can't we have a few things in this world that are just fun without going and sticking surveillance on them?

[emregucerr]

> I don’t think the gates should animate up into the air.

I agree! It feels off compared to the overall aesthetic of the game.

Awesome game though! Loved it.

[tgtweak]

There is definitely a turn-based minigame here - get the most "distance" travelled by the horse, every turn the horse moves one block towards it's closest escape and you can drop walls to cause it to find a new path - in this one you actually lose when the horse can't get out but the goal is to get the horse to move as many blocks as possible using your limited number of walls (or apples which can attract it).

[xg15]

> I don’t think the gates should animate up into the air. It breaks the visual logic of 2D for no benefit. It’s subconsciously confusing to see a gate I place in one cell move to occupy pixels in the cell “above” it.

I interpreted it as standard "top-down" RPG graphics, where the Y axis always doubles as the Z axis. As such, I didn't find it visually confusing - but it did made playing on mobile annoying, because you often end up targeting the wrong field.

[cubefox]

> I don’t think the gates should animate up into the air.

I think it should go up, otherwise it doesn't look like a wall. It would look like something the horse can step on and run over. For the water it makes sense to be flat flat and that the horse doesn't want to touch it: it is water-shy.

[gwbas1c]

Sometimes simple things are best. I really like the game as-is.

This is a rather simple game to program. IMO, if you can program, take a few weekends to make your own game based on your ideas. If you can't program, your ideas will lead you to a wonderful learning project.

[the_shivers]

Thanks for the feedback!

I would have responded earlier, but I wanted to actually implement something you suggested: different walls. Alternative wall sprites, which don't occlude other tiles so much, are now live and can be adjusted in the settings.

Re: analytics, the only serious plans I had were to use the daily level histograms to adjust difficulty. The idea of taking some levels and releasing them as a standalone game is tempting, but I wonder if doing this type of puzzle over and over again might get tedious? That's one of the reasons I thought it would work better as a daily game. Let's see how it's doing in a few months.

I love the mechanic ideas. I think there are two big constraints on what kind of cool new features/gimmicks can be implemented though. First: if this is going to be a daily game, the new mechanics have to be intuitive enough to where somebody could figure them out their first time playing. I like the idea of cherries being misleading, and it's a fun troll-ish idea for a single player game, but it would be a mean trick if it were someone's first daily. (Then again, there's someone who's first Wordle game was probably MYRRH.) The other constraint is I have a solver that can guarantee the optimal solution is actually optimal. Some game mechanics might make this a lot harder, or even impossible.

[oliwary]

Another thing to try could be to rank people in realtime instead of the one-off submission approach. I do this in https://spaceword.org (create tight crosswords using 21 letters), and I think it's quite motivating to see how you compare to others as you improve your solution. On the other hand, its a bit more taxing on the server, and then you also could not show the optimal solution.

[doctordoctor2]

IMO, the game is great to keep simple, but I’d like to play more levels than just daily, so could see people paying for the ability to play more, like NYT games, and could be part of a suite of game if curated daily by expert vs social curation. The blocks are small though for a small phone with big fingers.

I also wonder if making it GPL and submitting to various *NIX distros would be best. Then it may need to be standalone with random maps created by ML or similar.

[banannaise]

The turn-based version sounds interesting, but I think it falls on its face in practice. The game then becomes:

1. lure the horse to an optimal point on the map.

2. trap it in a small circle of fences.

3. build part of your final wall with the remaining fences.

4. one by one, move the fences trapping the horse in place into position.

[plastic3169]

Great game, I returned back to play next day.

> I don’t think the gates should animate up into the air. It breaks the visual logic of 2D for no benefit.

I also feel it would make more sense either for everything to be 2.5D or pure top down. Having appear / disappear animation is nice feedback to user though.

Other thing is that maybe the hitbox should change when the wall comes up. Now to remove it you need to press the grid, essentially the root of the wall. Unintuitive to me.

Thanks for the game, looking forward to when there is multiple horses or sheep to enclose.

[xg15]

And of course: Buy additional walls using in-game purchases!

(jk)

[lionkor]

I found the optimal solution for day 8 by hand, that was fun!

My algorithm, by hand, was as such:

1. Start with the smallest possible valid solution (1)

2. Expand slowly, and each "step" (like, moving a wall or two around to "obvious" spaces) must be a valid solution (this brings you to 40-60 score, depending on your choices, on day 8). Continue to step 3 once you can't see anything obvious.

3. Look at possible places where you could expand, but need 1 more block. You'll find one eventually.

4. See if you can spare any walls anywhere, using diagonals for example. If so, place the solution from 3 and go to 3 (repeat). If not, go to 5.

5. Count or estimate the squares gained by doing your improvement from 3. See if you can reduce your score by less than that, pessimizing your solution, to gain 1 wall. Once you've found one, go to 3.

That got me to the optimal score within 15 mins or so.

[sambuccid]

This feels strangely similar to TDD with the Tranformation Priority Premise

[ChrisbyMe]

I found the same algorithm! The top down solution didn't really work.

Very fun game

[adonovan]

I think you should change the cherries to a battery and call the game Correct Horse Battery Stable.

[gwern]

Or the cherries could be a delicious pastry or PBJ-like treat: _Collect Horse Buttery Stable_...

[layer8]

Use staples instead of walls as barriers.

[tetris11]

Or turn the cherries into sugar lumps, and call the game My Lovely Horse

[MildlySerious]

That is just delightful.

Reference[1] for anyone wondering.

[1] https://xkcd.com/936/

[scrumper]

This is nice, I enjoyed it. Was a couple points off the optimal score for day 8 but when I clicked "Show optimal" I couldn't then go back to see mine to compare. Either way, stretched the brain a bit.

Only nit: fix the walls. They take up one and a half spaces so are confusing, and they're sci-fi steel with flashing red lights. Turn them into one-square-only fences. You use fences to enclose horses, not raptor walls from Jurassic Park.

[xp84]

This is my feedback too. Turn “show optimal” into a toggle that persists on the page and toggles between yours and the optimal.

And same about the walls. Especially on mobile it’s hard enough to tap the right square, and having a wall poking up from the square below just makes things worse.

But overall I love the game!

[Groxx]

Yeah, it needs to add a toggle button to let you switch between yours and optimal quickly.

I did figure out that you can get back to yours by going through the past-days menu though.

[the_shivers]

Thanks for the feedback! And there's now one-square-only fences you can turn on in the settings.

[xg15]

I mean, the horse does sometimes talk about the demon god if you click on it, so who knows...

[rhymemini]

Score init should say N/EIGH instead of N/A, otherwise great.

[ronbenton]

Reminds me of a comic I saw a couple years back about a horse parliament where the horses only voted “neigh”

[snackdex]

dead. how in the world does a thought like that come into your mind. i feel like i got 0 in creativity

[kanemcgrath]

I am curious on how you would algorithmically find the optimal solution for this kind of problem for much bigger grids. I wanted to do some seed finding in Factorio for the same exact problem using the generated map images, but never found a good solution that was fast enough.

[Scaevolus]

The site uses Answer Set Programming with the Clingo engine to compute the optimal solutions for smaller grids. Maximizing grids like this is probably NP-hard.

Note that traditional SAT and SMT solvers are quite inefficient at computing flood-fills.

The ASP specifications it uses to compute optimal solutions are surprisingly short and readable, and look like:

  #const budget=11.
  horse(4,4).
  cell(0,0).
  boundary(0,0).
  cell(0,1).
  boundary(0,1).
  % ...truncated for brevity...
  cell(3,1).
  water(3,1).
  % ...
  
  % Adjacent cells (4-way connectivity)
  adj(R,C, R+1,C) :- cell(R,C), cell(R+1,C).
  adj(R,C, R-1,C) :- cell(R,C), cell(R-1,C).
  adj(R,C, R,C+1) :- cell(R,C), cell(R,C+1).
  adj(R,C, R,C-1) :- cell(R,C), cell(R,C-1).
  
  % Walkable = not water
  walkable(R,C) :- cell(R,C), not water(R,C).
  
  % Choice: place wall on any walkable cell except horse and cherries
  { wall(R,C) } :- walkable(R,C), not horse(R,C), not cherry(R,C).
  
  % Budget constraint (native counting - no bit-blasting!)
  :- #count { R,C : wall(R,C) } > budget.
  
  % Reachability from horse (z = enclosed/reachable cells)
  z(R,C) :- horse(R,C).
  z(R2,C2) :- z(R1,C1), adj(R1,C1, R2,C2), walkable(R2,C2), not wall(  R2,C2).
  
  % Horse cannot reach boundary (would escape)
  :- z(R,C), boundary(R,C).
  
  % Maximize enclosed area (cherries worth +3 bonus = 4 total)
  #maximize { 4,R,C : z(R,C), cherry(R,C) ; 1,R,C : z(R,C), not cherry(  R,C) }.
  
  % Only output wall positions
  #show wall/2.

[sunrunner]

> algorithmically find the optimal solution for this kind of problem for much bigger grids.

Great, now I've been double nerd-sniped - once for the thing itself and another for 'What would an optimiser for this look like? Graph cuts? SAT/SMT? [AC]SP?'

[johanvts]

I think it's NP hard, maybe from Sparsest Cut. But you could probably find the min-cut and then iterate by adding capacity on edges in the min cut until you find a cut of the right size. (if the desired cut-size is close to the min cut size at least).

[Zobody]

Constraint programming seems to be a fitting approach. Input would be number of walls, and the location of lakes. The decision variables would be the positions of walls. In order to encode the horse being enclosed, additional variables for whether horse can reach a given square can be given. Finally, constraints for reachability and that edges cannot be reached should ensure correctness.

[emil-lp]

Someone asked about this very problem here:

https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/176005/how-to-remove-...

[qwertyforce]

I think there should be some graph algorithm for this, to find a bottleneck in a graph

[emil-lp]

There's probably an FPT algorithm using important separators (4^k).

[savolai]

I would like to be able to compare/switch optimal with my solution with single click.

[zimpenfish]

Side by side or a diff view would be great.

[the_shivers]

This is now implemented on daily levels! Click the link below your score after submission.

[merelysounds]

Same.

I took a screenshot of my solution and the optimal one - and then I could compare like this.

[langarus]

lovely, I've created a solution finder for it.

1. Do a screenshot of the grid (try to include walls as well)

2. Open https://enclosure-horse-solution.onrender.com/

3. Make sure the number of walls are correct in the input (bottom left)

4. Press "Solve"

PS: It might crash as it's on the free version of render. I've added a caching layer.

Here's the github so you can run it locally:

https://github.com/langarus/enclosure.horse-solution

clone it and run

make init // make web

[g4zj]

There is a level editor with the ability to show the optimal result for a custom level. In theory, one could recreate any official level and reveal the best solution that way. However, I haven't tried this to verify any intentional roadblocks by the developer.

[ronbenton]

You caching in memory or disk? Redis or db might survive the crashes and reduce future ones

[langarus]

I see some of you are already crashing the server. :melting: try to run it locally if you can't get the result via render

[Arubis]

Each time I see a `horse` domain, particularly for entertainment, I remember to `traceroute bad.horse` and smile again.

[ZeWaka]

lmao, this is beautiful

[blablabla555]

Hi, I only made an account to comment on this. First and foremost I love it, thank you! Second, I would love to know the maximum achievable score each day! so I don’t feel like I have to spend an infinite amount of time with it, just to make sure that my solution is the ideal. Sometimes I might already have the optimal solutions, but I still have to make sure to find the other worse ideas, just to be sure.

[roskelld]

I did Day 8 - I don't know if Perfect means I got the most optimal score, I do show up at the top of the graph.

https://enclose.horse Day 8 PERFECT! 100%

[zimpenfish]

If you click on "View Optimal", it shows you the optimal solution which should be identical[0] to yours for "Perfect".

[0] I'm assuming, possibly quite wrongly, that there's only one optimal solution per day.

[blablabla555]

Hi, First and foremost I love it, thank you! Second, I would love to know the maximum achievable score each day! so I don’t feel like I have to spend an infinite amount of time with it, jut to make sure that my solution is the ideal. Sometimes I might already have the optimal solutions, but I still have to make sure to find the other worse ideas, just to be sure.

[lukebechtel]

Which came first -- the game or the domain name?

[hk__2]

Generally the idea of the game, then the domain name, then the game.

[sneak]

i have soooo many domains i’ve paid for for years that will now get sites because of the fact i can code at 10x+ now.

[keepamovin]

I imagine you went searching for domain names and came up with this? I resisted clicking on this top story all day because I thought "how good could that be? "enclose horse" what is that?" Yet, the experience was genuine-slow-forming-smile-of-understanding. This is really good.

[ryandrake]

Cool game, but I don't like how you get only one chance. Even returning to the page, you can't try again to beat your previous score. No replayability value at all.

[hombre_fatal]

The one shot per day provides a reason to sink your teeth into one board.

I love Wordle but I found it unplayable when I used that Wordle archive site to play infinite games since there was no reason to think deeply about the 10th+ round I was playing in one sitting.

[anigbrowl]

It shows you what the exit routes are, what your score will be, and you can move the gates around as long as you want, so the means of finding the maximum area are entirely within your grasp.

[MrGilbert]

I disagree about the replayability aspect. It‘s a daily challenge, so come back tomorrow. I quite like it.

[gs17]

IMO they should have a (second) pop-up that warns you that you only get one submit. Not sure if it should let you know if you've made an optimal solution or not, but since it's not timed there's no cost in slowing people down. I've seen similar daily puzzles where you get to see the leaderboard and then can go back and optimize further. Yes, it says it at the beginning, but it's still easy to forget.

[geoffschmidt]

Click the sandwich icon in the top right, then either Past Puzzles or Browse, and you can play more puzzles. (Or even create and submit your own.)

[matsemann]

You can just remove/change walls after having placed all. You see your current score, but can keep iterating.

[QuantumNomad_]

You get one submit but you can press reset and find better solutions even though you can’t submit it to the leaderboard

[zwnow]

You can just test without submitting though?

[goodmatt]

Clear cookies?

[klohto]

bruh it’s like Wordle, come back tomorrow

[n4r9]

Nice game! Out of curiosity, are the daily levels built by hand or algorithmically? Is there some way to measure their difficulty computationally, other than just trying to do it yourself or seeing how many people get a perfect score? I'm also working on a grid-based browser game and both those questions have come up for me, I'm keen to see how other people tackle it.

[the_shivers]

All the daily levels are built by hand. I struggled to come up with a good random level generator. You can see my feeble attempts in the Edit page (via the hamburger menu) by giving the dice button a few sad clicks.

I did originally try to measure the difficulty computationally by running the solver and timing it, but it didn't really line up with what humans would find difficult. Now I'm just eyeballing it.

[pests]

There is a built in map editor, click the hamburger menu.

[zem]

lots of fun! the fact that the walls spill over the square boundaries is very annoying though, i would love to have an option to just make a wall a filled in square without the 3d effect.

[rob001]

This is a very cool and enjoyable game. I'd be really interested in knowing what framework/library was used to make it. I inspected the source and can see the game is done on canvas, but can't work out more than that.

[Retr0id]

I wouldn't be surprised if they're just rawdogging the canvas API

[daneel_w]

The canvas API itself is pretty basic. It's not complicated at all to slap graphical tiles onto the screen.

[the_shivers]

Just vanilla canvas + Typescript.

[xg15]

Looks like some people have discovered the first "accidental" game mechanic: The horse can walk over cherry fields, but the player cannot place walls on them - so if a level designer places cherries strategically, they can create unblockable paths.

Right now, this is only used for troll levels, but I wonder if you could also use it for some actual puzzles.

[Majromax]

It's not just troll levels, see https://enclose.horse/play/n9YDZm

[arthurjj]

My 10 year old loves this game. He started playing it Wednesday or Thursday of last week and basically all of his screen time. Both trying to optimize and the level design scratch an itch that few games do

[nickponline]

I think this problem is called the maximum-weight closure and can be solved as max flow. You want to find a cut between source (horse) so they were no out-going edges not in the cut (escape routes).

[emil-lp]

It's not the same problem. First, it's not directed, second it's a vertex separation problem.

[zachallaun]

Ton of fun! Was interesting to see how my strategy evolved as well. I started out trying to make a large pen, but quickly realized that wouldn't work, so I made a small pen and then started moving it out. This allowed me to see individual optimizations and try alternatives. Even at the end, about to hit submit, I wasn't sure my solution was optimal, but ended up with the optimal sizse-86 solution for today's challenge. Will try again tomorrow!

[dvh]

> Horses can't move diagonally or over water.

Ah the famous spherical horse in vacuum

[niemandhier]

This is surprisingly similar to a subset of the ARC II puzzles.

The collected answered could probably be used to teach an AI to approach this type of problem thereby gaining some of the cognitive biases that humans have, which is exactly what you want in some cases: An AI that generates human like solutions to hard problems .

[DonThomasitos]

I love it! I miss a way to see the reference solution, would be nice in order to learn. Or maybe get a hint.

[komodo99]

Usability, i'd like either a 'save/restore state' button, or a 'restore current best'. Right now, experimenting after finding a solution seems like a punishment if I can't recall exactly what I did to hit my rolling 'best'. Good game though!

[abetusk]

There is a button that restores your best, it's right under the current score.

[xg15]

I'm pretty sure the author got the domain first and then designed an (awesome) game around it.

[dyigitpolat]

just vibe-coded an optimizer for this game that takes in the screenshot of the grid and the number of walls as input, and spits out the optimal wall configuration (supports cherries too!)

algorithm:

1. infer grid dimensions

2. color histogram analysis to designate grasses, water, cherries and horse

3. apply mixed-integer linear programming to determine optimized wall placements

4. profit!

try: https://dyigitpolat.github.io/enclose-horse-solver

source: https://github.com/dyigitpolat/enclose-horse-solver

[grugdev42]

Love this! I feel like this would get a lot of traction as a mobile app. It's a perfect "I've got five minutes free" game.

Doesn't feel outrageously difficult to put inside a webview?

[naedish]

A very fun game - it took quite a bit of fiddling to get an optimal solution using an LLM. Interesting as I haven't tried using them for 'unique' algo problems much. And then the day 9 puzzle broke my original solver (I had bounded areas that were unreachable to the horse so didn't actually score). Will be interesting to see whether the solver works on day 10.

It would be interesting to be able to change the wall budget for each puzzle to add some variation (with a max limit).

[DuncanCoffee]

Nice game, I'm going to sink some time on these! Got 86 points today

https://enclose.horse Day 8 PERFECT! 100%

[roskelld]

Enjoyed that.

Removing a block was a bit fiddly on FireFox (Floorp) due to the right click menu appearing when I tried to click on a tile.

Looking forward to tomorrows!

[porphyra]

I thought so too at first but you can just left click to remove the wall actually.

[fwipsy]

I expected the horse to move one tile for each block you placed. I had an elaborate plan to lure it towards one exit and then close it at the last minute... Nope!

[Biganon]

John Conway studied similar problems

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_problem

[zimpenfish]

I did see a game recently which did that (you place a tile, the animal moves a tile, etc.) - possibly on itch.io. I'll see if I can dig it out.

[divbzero]

The game dynamic feels a bit like Wordle: One puzzle per day and different solutions that you can compare with others.

[hotsalad]

Does each day's challenge come out at a certain time in your local timezone? I have a friend who is seeing day 9 when I can only see day 8. I'd request having new daily maps come out at a consistent global time for the purpose of competing with friends who live in different timezones.

[the_shivers]

I tried to match what Wordle does, so it should come out midnight in your local timezone.

[genekwame]

Raaarhh. Perfect solution yesterday, perfect solution today! I'm really on a roll. Love love the game

[sublinear]

Fun game, but the animation style is too distracting for me. Maybe there should be an option to disable it or have it stop automatically.

I didn't initially expect it would be a problem, but the constant squiggly movement gets very annoying.

[milperks]

I love this! Would you consider adding a settle to toggle the animations off? When I'm staring at it to figure it out the animations are a bit distracting!

[Aardwolf]

Nice puzzle! But I'd like a button to go back to your most optimal solution so far: it's tedious to try other options but then have to convert it back to your better solution again...

[xp84]

There is one! Or maybe dev is just that fast. Tap where it says “Best: 67” and it reverts to previous best.

[alexjplant]

Fantastic fun! My humble level contribution is here [1].

[1] https://enclose.horse/play/44wCCO

[athrowaway3z]

Great little game. For the community levels, I'd suggest adding filters based on size & walls.

I'd even go so far as to deny any submission with more than sqrt(size) walls.

[croemer]

I didn't realize level 1 gave me 11 (eleven) walls at first. I thought it stood for II = roman 2. Maybe use a font that makes the difference between 1 and I clearer.

[DougN7]

Wow, that’s a lot more challenging than it looks. I agree with another commenter that the 3d blocks look confusing - they appear to cover two spaces.

[SteveJS]

Wife’s comment: “Cherries? It needs to be an apple.”

[atticus_]

https://enclose.horse Day 8 PERFECT! 100%

[nirolo]

Very cool game. Immediately reminded me of pathery, which I can also recommend to everyone who enjoys this.

[sandyarmstrong]

Is there guaranteed to be a solution that encloses the cherry? Is Day 8 the first day to have a cherry?

[the_shivers]

So far, I haven't had the heart to deceive people with red cherrings. All levels with cherries use at least some of them in the solution.

[29athrowaway]

A good game. Possibly the 2048 of 2026.

[abhi555shek]

Nice game! I could only play one game but wish I could play previous days' games as well

[wseqyrku]

You can. Checkout the Past Puzzles in the menu (top-right).

[g0ran]

Seeing tile animations immediately reminded me of Godzilla 2: War of the Monsters on NES.

[omgmajk]

Very enjoyable work pastime!

Great stuff :)

[MagicMoonlight]

This is a really fun game. And I just realised you can make your own levels!

[eithed]

A nice easter egg - click on a horse, when enclosed, on mobile

[wirtzdan]

So fun!

I wonder how the wiggle animation is implemented in for the buttons and modal.

[Lammy]

It's like ChuChu Rocket! + JezzBall; two of my favorite games!

[curioussquirrel]

Such a good game and execution. Thank you

[godisdad]

Looking forward to the AI enabled subscription version

[sambuccid]

I want a tool that visualizes code paths in this way

[theo1996]

I dont understand what is the goal of this game

[pests]

Enclose the horse. Horse likes most space.

[valleyer]

Nice. Reminds me of Rodent's Revenge.

[posed]

I enjoyed it, thanks for making it!

[Narushia]

Happy Year of the Horse!

[menzoic]

Leetcode problem

[falloutx]

Great game

[jerbearito]

Very fun

[genekwame]

Raaarrrhh. Perfect solution yesterday, perfect solution today! I'm really on a roll lmao. Love it

[zwaps]

Which AI am I training here?