About
Canal Lock Algorithm is a daily logic puzzle. Each local date has one canal, the same for every player. One barge is stuck in the basin with others queuing behind it; you work it up the flight of locks to the summit within a move budget.
Some locks hide their rule until you sense them or reach their gates. On every canal at least one hidden lock breaks the obvious route, so the puzzle is the re-plan.
How a canal is made
A seeded generator draws each canal from its date alone, so no server is involved and no two players see different canals. Before a canal is shown, a solver that ships with the game searches every reachable state of it. A canal is used only if it can be finished within its budget, if the fewest possible moves are known and recorded, and if every shortest route that assumes hidden locks are harmless fails. The budget is what a player needs who always takes such a route and re-plans after each surprise.
Words used
A lock is a chamber with gates at each end; a pound is the level water between two locks; paddles are the sluices that fill or empty a chamber. Upstream is towards the summit. The terms are used as on British inland waterways.
Fiction
Every canal, name and rule is invented. Nothing here describes a real waterway or claims hydraulic accuracy.
Who runs it
- Operator
- PLACEHOLDER-OPERATOR-BV
- Trading as
- PLACEHOLDER
- Address
- PLACEHOLDER street 1, PLACEHOLDER, Belgium
- Country
- Belgium
- Company number
- PLACEHOLDER-KBO
- VAT number
- PLACEHOLDER-VAT
- support@PLACEHOLDER.example
Write via the contact page.