UnStrew Me

UnStrew Me 1.0

It's a derivative of a vey popular puzzle called 8-Puzzle, I played if for the first time in FoxPro, the MSDOS version. Looking back, I realised that while most of my friends were holding this game in their hands, I was actually playing it on a computer. In early 2000's computers were rare in India.

 I call it a derivative because it is different in the following ways:

• It is 15-puzzle, in that it has 15 numbers instead of 8.
• The number are random between 1..100 instead of numbers from 1...15.
• This introduces a complexity that the player would need to keep scanning for the next number even as he brings the current number into position.
• Moves do not count, only time does. I took this decision because I think moves are directly proportional to time. Completing in lesser moves must essentially mean lesser moves.

App Store Link: 

UnStrew Me and Myself 

In India, during the early 2000's computers were scarce and in fact a luxury. Internet was like owning a Jaguar. Luckily, I had access to a computer because Dad was working for Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board billing. A computer and a printer were a must. The old dot-matrix printer used to keep us all awake, incessantly striking its pins, printing bills for millions of families of Andhra Pradesh. Thanks to him, my foray into the magical world of computers started when I was just 15 years old.

Everyday I used to come running from school to play the 8-Puzzle and of course to watch SwatKats. I was more than addicted, to both. Within a month my fingers were flying over the arrow keys to complete the 8-Puzzle and soon I was able to finish any combination in around 30s. Unfortunately, the FoxPro version did not store statistics, so I was unable to quantitatively compare my performance with each passing day.

At around the same time, my school, Jubilee Hills Public School, introduced a programming course in GWBASIC. I fell in love with it. We had one class a week and I would be eagerly waiting for it for the entire week. We used to have an assignment per week but I used to make at least ten variations of it while my classmates struggled with the original. I soon realised programming came naturally to me and I wanted to program all my favourite games: 8-Puzzle and brick games like Tetris, Snake, Brick car etc. I poured over books to learn graphics and soon realised GWBASIC was just not powerful enough. It was around that time when my cousin, Venu anna, suggested that I learn C. I went for C classes during my 8th standard summer vacations.

Within an year, I had a collection of seven games in C. My 8-Puzzle would count the number of moves and time taken, my Tetris was as good as the original and my Snake had more features than the original. For the next couple of years, there was coding and nothing else in my life.

All this came to a grinding halt when my parents decided I had to try enter the prestigious IIT. My precious computer was locked up and I was enrolled into a million tuitions to compete for admission to an IIT, it was the worst phase of my life.

I failed to make it into the IIT but looking back it was a very important phase of my life. Now, equipped with a natural flair for programming and a strong background in mathematics and physics, I feel I can do great things. But, only time will tell.

Working for software firms and my passion for travelling has kept me busy with no time for me to pursue my interest in programming. But finally, during summer when it was impossible to travel, I worked on weekends and got Disarrange out into the App Store.

Happy gaming folks! Watch out for updates!

P.S: Thanks to Miss Saloni Sinha for providing the beautiful Icon.