Software

I like puzzle games, and one that I’ve always played in a rather mindless way, just to kill time, is the one called Flood It. Or Color Flood. But whatever you call it, it’s the one with a grid of random-colored squares where you start in one corner and keep flood-filling from there in different colors until you’ve flooded the entire board. The fewer moves you make, the higher your score.

But the more I’ve played it, the more curious I’ve become. What is the optimal strategy? Should you always flood as many squares as possible, or is it sometimes better to choose a smaller move to set up a bigger play? And if so, when?

Well, I don’t like just wondering about these things - I want to know. So I wrote a version of the game to help me find out. I call it FloodBoard.

Weather apps are great at telling you the facts: temperature, wind, humidity, chance of rain… But they don’t tell you what you actually need to know in the moment:

“Should I grab the big coat, the light jacket, or nothing at all?”

Sure, I can see out the window whether it’s raining or not, but temperature? That’s hard to nail down at a glance.

Or at least, it used to be hard.

Now I have a servant for that.

A simple and lightweight command line app to track issues and plans for solo developers.