Pushover is a puzzle game released for SNES+PC, where you must set up a chain reaction of falling dominoes, each with various properties, such that all must collapse while leaving the trigger domino last.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 1.11.9
- Genre: Puzzle
Domino Types
- Standard: Topples once hit.
- Stopper: Blocks others causing them to rebound if possible.
- Splitter: Dropping anything onto it will split it into both directions. This does not count as your official push.
- Exploder: Destroys platform once hit.
- Tumbler: Carries on moving once active.
- Delay: Acts like a stopper once first hit, as it takes a while to fall.
- Bridger: When toppling into a small chasm, will bridge the gap.
- Vanish: Disappears once toppled.
- Trigger: The goal domino, no others can topple after this one.
- Ascender: Once hit, or dropped over an edge, will ascend until it hits a ceiling, then topple horizontally.
The fastest movement in-game is the wave speed produced by standard dominoes, and thus is the quickest way of triggering things far away. The second fastest is running speed, then ascender's horizontal speed, and finally tumbler movement. This means if we can reduce a tumbler's path length by shoving in normal dominoes in its wake, then it'll be faster overall.
Improvements
This is an improvement of 4751 frames over the previous submission.
| Level | Difference | Level | Difference | Level | Difference | Level | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 03 | -20 | 27 | -18 | 51 | -120 | 79 | -4 |
| 05 | -17 | 29 | -15 | 52 | -3 | 80 | -22 |
| 10 | -5 | 30 | -36 | 54 | -18 | 81 | -97 |
| 11 | -35 | 31 | -15 | 62 | -24 | 84 | -189 |
| 12 | -154 | 34 | -6 | 63 | -585 | 85 | -485 |
| 13 | -30 | 36 | -7 | 64 | -18 | 86 | -18 |
| 14 | -30 | 37 | -26 | 65 | -81 | 87 | -180 |
| 15 | -15 | 38 | -42 | 66 | -212 | 90 | -12 |
| 17 | -10 | 39 | -99 | 68 | -17 | 91 | -7 |
| 18 | -24 | 40 | -25 | 69 | -49 | 92 | -84 |
| 19 | -129 | 43 | -12 | 70 | -6 | 93 | -18 |
| 20 | -141 | 45 | -6 | 71 | -105 | 95 | -21 |
| 21 | -81 | 46 | -24 | 72 | -12 | 96 | -287 |
| 22 | -19 | 47 | -21 | 73 | -165 | 97 | -12 |
| 25 | -18 | 48 | -228 | 76 | -3 | 98 | -227 |
| 26 | -5 | 50 | -5 | 78 | -214 | 99 | -117 |
Faster Exits
Once a level has been completed successfully, our character "G.I. Ant" will try to do a slow victory cheer, which is negated by moving. That's why at the end of every level, we're forced to wait just next to the exit instead. However, heading to the exit from the right hand side turns out to be faster than either waiting on the left, or by placing a stopper nearby and waiting in the 'push position'. All exits have now been entered from the right side where possible.
Faster Placements
Trying to place a domino down where it can't go will cause him to drop it on the next spot a few frames earlier. Applications on most levels.
Route Changes
Plenty of levels have improved exits, or slightly more efficient placing; but the levels with notably different puzzle solutions are as follows:
03: Faster to move the far left domino into position, as otherwise the game gets confused as to which one it wants us to be pushing, and ends up actually wasting time with indecision.
11: A slight reorder up top takes the same amount of time to set up, but means we're already on the left side when it's finished and so the tumbler can be activated earlier.
12: Moving the tumbler first gets everything into position with 2 fewer swaps.
13: The system gets set off 1 domino earlier, which also saves the tumbler moving 1 unit at the end, giving 30 frames total saving.
14: Rerouted middle tier, which saves 2 units of walking.
18: Faster to trigger the Ascender from left side.
19: Didn't take the standard domino up initially, as its faster to come back for it once its destination is unoccupied.
20: Didn't waste time moving the tumbler, just keep it where it is and start the reaction from that point. Saves messing about.
21: Didn't take the delay with us initially, as it costs an extra pickup. Just grab it after dumping the standard domino instead.
25: Push regular into the delay, rather than slowly triggering the delay first.
34: Push final tumbler from left side instead, slightly more efficient.
36: Slight Reroute, placing dominoes in proper order to minimise distances.
40: Starting from the second domino costs 1 unit of extra walking distance, but saves 1 unit of tumbler movement, overall saving 21 frames.
46: Placing Ascender 1 step earlier saves time.
48: There's not enough time to set off the tumbler from its current position and still be able to reach the exploder. So rather than doing the exploder first we simply move the upstairs dominoes back a bit instead, giving us enough time and preventing us from needing to backtrack to set them off.
52: Ever so slightly faster to pick up the moving tumbler, and just drop it onto the splitter than to move the stopper out of the way.
63: A much better ordering to how we place the 3 delays. The first was dropped into position from the left side, saving an additional PickUp+PutDown. A slight reroute places the second delay on the middle tier now, and actually using the closest domino this time. Finally the third gets dropped up top as before, but by ending with this one we're now closer to where we need to be to start the chain. Largest saving of the run.
65: Ignored the first domino which the previous version moved, because it didn't actually contribute since there was a tumbler there anyway.
66: A quick glitch here, and sadly the only use of it during the run. During a few frames of falling with the stopper domino, it still retains its function. This means we can still get down to the bottom tier, but enables us to get down to the bottom tier sooner, to turn the tumbler around earlier, and save over 200 frames.
68: Slightly closer ascender for a quick time save.
71: Normally we need to shove a delay on the left side in order to get timing sorted out, but we use another solution instead. Simply stealing a regular domino from the chain leading left will stop it completely anyway, and we still have our 1 official push to resume that chain later on. This saves a lot of time assembling the puzzle, but also sadly destroys the ladder we need to take the quickest path to the exit. This does add time sadly, but it still creates an overall time save.
78: A better ordering on the second tier, and smarter disposal of the stopper brick. The time saved on the second tier gives us a nice head start on next tier, giving an early bounce cycle from the tumbler and giving huge saving to level.
81: Trapped the moving Tumbler better.
84: Reroute where we placed each splitter, such that the final one we place is closer to where we need to start the sequence, saving time setting it off.
85: Firstly we aim to leave before fully setting it up, as there's more than enough time to return here afterwards. Secondly this was routed such that the final bit we placed beforehand made us closer to where we needed to go afterwards.
87: Once again, reorder the first 3 dominoes such that we place the furthest one last, so it's faster to start the next section.
92: A better reordering of all the blocks saves a second or so.
96: A better ordering of dominoes, and using the spare Vanish in the small gap to trigger the next tumbler sooner.
98: Another better ordering of sorting out the dominoes, skipping a few extra moves. (And the ladder leading down to the bottom tier is broken, it only works to ascend, and thus we can only access those two once the exploder has done its job).
99: A better reordering which allowed us to use a splitter when it's near the intended edge, so we can drop it into place rather than slowly placing it.
Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: Good improvement. Accepting as an improvement to the published movie.
Spikestuff: I'm no Push-Over but I have no idea how to end this joke. Publishing.