Go to 15th Avenue at the place where 15th Avenue and Moraga St would intersect (if they intersected). Wander around (less than a block) until you find a place where these dominoes would make sense. Then make sense of them:
This page contains spoilers from the 2-Tone Game. If you haven't already played the game, you might want to do so before continuing reading this page.
One Step Beyond was a tiling puzzle.
This puzzle's development violated one of my little rules: it got tougher during playtest. And it started out plenty tough. But it got tougher after the first playtest, when I knew I'd still have plenty of chances to fix things.
The first draft was pretty different from what made it into the game:
Go to 15th Avenue at the place where 15th Avenue and Moraga St would intersect (if they intersected). Wander around (less than a block) until you find a place where these dominoes would make sense. Then make sense of them:
What changed?
Someone in the first batch of playtesters pointed out that it would be cool to use domino dots instead of numerals.
Instead of giving players driving directions to the top of the stairway, in the final version, I sent them to the bottom. The top of the stairs is in a curvy/twisty set of streets on a hill. The first set of playtesters got the directions a little wrong and ended up walking up to the top of the big dune at nearby Grand View park. This was beautiful: We were there for sunset-time, and sunset from the big dune is pretty. But that also meant that by the time the playtesters figured out they should be somewhere else, daylight was fading.
This first version of the puzzle is based on a little section of stairway in the middle of the big stairs. It's smaller than the final version (and is thus perhaps simpler than the final—though enough other things changed such that it's hard to tell which is tougher). The fading-light playtesters mentioned that if I'd used the bottom section of steps, they could have used car headlights to light it up.
The first version of the puzzle, being smaller, solved to a word (CRIMINAL) instead of to a set of directions on what to do next. "CRIMINAL" isn't a very thematic word, but the choices were pretty constrained. (Yes, very constrained. When I saw I'd be able to get a makes-sense and thematic message for the final version, I was pretty darned pleased.)
This first version didn't have the fine-checkered border. Players had to figure out the dominos' orientation basically by considering their letter choices and figuring out which could become words. It was pretty difficult.