I’ve mostly been playing Skulls of Sedlec recently, and still enjoying it.
Tonight I broke out The Maiden In The Forest which I was expecting to be a potential miss based on comments I’d seen at the time I ordered (but decided to try anyway, being a dedicated solo puzzle).
I’ve only played once so far, but found it pretty disappointing. You have twelve turns in which to flip all twelve trees to their monochrome state, via one intermediate “upside-down” state – so changing each tree twice in total.
Each turn you can flip cards in sets of 2, 3, and 4 equally-spaced cards (i.e. 4 is a ‘cross’ shape with two cards between each of the four; 3 is a triangle with three cards between each; and 2 means opposite-facing cards). You are allowed to do all three of those sets in a single turn if you can make it work, but you have constraints on what constitutes a valid set, and how you can rearrange cards (swapping card positions based on certain rules) to fit those criteria. However this means you can potentially flip up to 9 times in a single turn, and you only have to flip 36 24 times to win over 12 turns, so if things start out well you can win the game very very quickly.
After a handful of turns I only had four cards left to flip. However each turn you randomly choose a symbol you’re not allowed to touch that turn, and my next four turns were completely wasted due to being unable to manipulate any cards at all, as both of the pairs I needed to swap included the symbol I couldn’t touch. Not a fun way to pass the turns.
Finally I succeeded in drawing a different symbol and was able to arrange the cards into two opposing pairs, at which point I could use the “flip 2” action.
Despite some bad luck in the middle, I still had a few turns left when I won. The initial turns were the only interesting part of the game, after which it seemed to quickly devolve into a fairly dull crapshoot.
The artwork is quite nice, and perhaps my next game will prove me wrong, but I don’t think this one is for me.