TRUFFLE TRIFLE

Players enter a room that is set up like a giant box of truffles. There are eight truffles nestled in dents on the floor, arranged in a 3 x 3 grid. There is an extra empty space in the grid. The goal is to move the truffles piece by piece, rolling them into the empty space, to match a pre-arranged pattern. The truffles will be spaced in such a way that it wouldn't be possible to cheat by maneuvering a further truffle around other truffles; players have to move them piece by piece into the empty spot.

This game is based off of the 'sliding puzzle' game that involves a tile of grids, with the extra physicality of players having to roll the truffles into their spots. The walls are decorated with papers that would typically be found inside a fancy box of chocolates, such as Nutrition facts and contents. The contents will display the correct pattern that the players have to arrange the truffles into.

There would be two possible patterns that the grid will accept, with the idea that this would be the 'reset' in case the group before managed to sort the chocolates before time ran out. My idea is that either the contents card will light up with one of the two patterns, changing at the appropriate time, or that there would be two different content cards in the room, but only one will light up depending on the pattern that the room will accept for that turn.

If players don't win, nothing has to be changed for the next turn of players because there are several possible starting arrangements for the puzzle. It is unlikely for a puzzle to become unsolvable given the same starting arrangement because players will only be able to move the truffles one piece at a time, so in the flow of gameplay it will either eventually be solved or remain in a solvable state. However, in case something gets messed up, there is an algorithm to determine if an arrangement is unsolvable, so the idea is that the room will run the algorithm before each turn to determine solvability. The dents on the floor could be on movable platforms that could automatically lift and shuffle if this is the case. if this is too hard to create, the truffles could be lit up different colors, so that the arrangements are by color instead of by truffle pattern. Then the 'shuffling' between turns would be a lot simpler in this case, as the lights inside the truffles can simply be programmed to change to a different color instead of the whole tile moving.