It’s finally here! The major release version 2019.1 of Masters of Puzzle along with the Player Controls 2.0 overhaul is now available for all of you on Steam. It’s been a long journey since the last major update and we would like to thank you all for your patience. We do believe it’s been worth it. Also, with this release, we are now able to provide you with new puzzles and new features at a much faster rate.

As usual, you can find the full release notes on our website here but keep reading for more important information.

Player Controls 2.0

The new controls system changes completely the way you interact with and play the game. Until the tutorial is available again, please use the help interface inside the game (you can now open it with F1 key) and this short guide to adjust to the new play style.

Player Movement

The player movements have been adjusted to match more closely the modern standards for similar games. You still move around by using the WASD keys and you rotate your camera view in any direction while holding the RMB pressed. Now you can also rotate the camera view left and right using the keyboard with keys Q (to the right) and E (to the left). The buttons for ascending and descending have been changed to R and F respectively. The movement can still be accelerated and slowed down by holding the Shift and Ctrl keys respectively while moving.

Interactable Items

With the new system in place, any environment object can now easily be made interactable. You will be able to perform direct actions to any such object but these actions will differ based on the object. Keep in mind that no interactable objects might leave the boundaries of the playing surface.

New Interaction Tools

You now have 4 new tools to interact with the game environment. These are accessible via the new GUI widget on the right side of the screen while in-game. You can also switch between the tools by using the numeric 1 to 4 keys. Each of the 4 tools is bound to the LMB once activated. Here is a short description of what each of them does:

• General interaction tool – this is the default tool used for most interaction in the game. It is enabled when you first enter the game and is used to interact with any interactable item. This tool has both a common behavior and item-specific behavior. The common behavior allows you to pick up any interactable item, move it around, and rotate it left or right with the keys Z and C respectively. You can find more about the item-specific behavior inside the game
• Gather tool – this tool can affect only puzzle tiles and is used to gather a bunch of them in your virtual hand. New GUI in the lower-left corner of the screen will show you the tiles you’ve picked up. Tiles in your hand can be moved back to the game board with the General interaction tool
• Browse tool (beta) – this tool can affect only puzzle tiles and is used to scatter them as if pushed around by a virtual finger (or two). The longer you hold the LMB down the stronger the force applied by this tool will become
• Flatten tool (beta) – this tool can affect only puzzle tiles and is used to flatten them around the surface as if pressed by a virtual palm

There is much more to this update, but we would like to let you discover the rest of the features in Player Controls 2.0 in the game. As this is a major change in a lot of game areas, there might be some issues that escaped our tests. If you encounter anything, don’t hesitate to report it or ask for assistance in the Steam community hub.