Hey, you can download Flipuzzle again!

 After trying out Chutes and Levers, I decided that I wanted to revisit Flipuzzles. That series was the first set of puzzles I discovered that involved flipping and rotating a card and nothing else. 

The only component is the card itself. As you follow some sort of path on grid, you have to keep a track of where you are in your head. For me, at least, that can be quite tricky.

There are a variety of Flipuzzles. Let me compare and contrast a couple examples. 

The most basic one is Maze. You have a grid of different colored squares. You can move one space at a time. If you move up and down, you flip the card longways. If you move left or right, you flip it sideways. Either way, you are in the same coordinates on the other side of the card. In Maze, you need to find a path of the same colored tiles from the beginning point to the end.

All of the Flipuzzles follow this basic template. You are finding a path by flipping the card in different ways.

The other example I want to show is Chess. In Chess, your movements are controlled by what chess piece you are on and you have have to land on other chess pieces. The reason I picked Chess as an example is because l thought not would be one of the hardest to parse but I actually found it to be the easiest. It also shows how variety can be added to the basic formula.

Flipuzzles started out as a design contest entry called Thin Cube, one card that acted a bit like a Rubiks Cube. (Extra thanks to D. Teuber who sent me a colorblind friendly version so I could actually play it) Then, for a short time, there was a collection of eighteen puzzles in seven different flavors available for download.

That went away because Button Shy licensed the system for the subscribers. I wasn’t one at the time but I hope the puzzles made for Button Shy get released sometime.

Then, after Chutes and Levers reminded me of the series’ existence, I went back to its BGG entry and found a new set of nine puzzles had been released in 2024! So now I can recommend Flipuzzles again.

One Card Mazes remains my favorite form of this sort of puzzle. I find them intuitive to parse but still tough to solve. And I’m apparently not alone since they’ve had four successful Kickstarters.

However, Flipuzzles is still an interesting system with a lot of variety. It’s also the most intricate single card puzzle system I’ve seen. Now that you can check it out, it’s worth checking out.