FLIP 9 - an interesting and simple solo game

I think I came across the game when I was researching the games that will be released at Essen 2014. I was looking for games that can be played solo as these games will probably be possible to cross platform and become digital games. I had just learnt Phaser in school and thus wanted to try my hand at digitalizing a tabletop game so I decided to work on Flip 9.

Flip 9 is a solo micro card game where only 9 cards are required. At the start, the cards are randomly shuffled and placed in a straight line. By means of swapping 2 cards, you are expected to reorder the line from 1-9 again. The swapping mechanism is quite clever because after you have selected 2 cards, your next card will have been selected and you only need to select 1 card from there onwards. How the card is selected is depending on the 2 cards that are being swapped.




For example, if 5 and 4 are selected, 5+4 = 9 so the next card to be swapped with will be 9.
If the total is > 9, for example, 8 and 6. 8+6 = 14, the 2 digits are added to get a new total, 14 = 1+4 = 5. So the next card to be swapped will be 5.

It seems almost ridiculous that all combinations is solvable but after playing it a few times I do believe the average number of swaps needed is approximately 25-30. This is also the basic mode. If you want to play the advanced mode, the cards can be flipped to reveal a different picture. Your goal in advanced will be to order it 9-1 and all displaying the same picture. Flip 9 feels very much like a rubik's cube when you play it and I am sure there are strategies that can be derived to provide quick solutions to any puzzles. Feel free to share it if you have found any!

I managed to implement the basic game and asked the designer and artist (both the same person) for permission to use their art and to release this. I am very grateful to Chen Zhifan for giving me permission and I had a lot of fun creating this game.

Do leave any feedback/suggestions in this post!

The game I translated online can be found here
http://phaser.magnet.tsoa.nyu.edu/eric/www/flip9/

The actual game can be found here
http://bgg.cc/boardgame/165737/flip-9