Rather than counting mistakes, just allow mistakes, and just not let the puzzle get solved until it’s complete without mistakes.
This is how most of Simon Tatham’s puzzles work, and that works well.
Sure, but then it's easier, and you can just keep clicking around by trial and error without thinking about it, which is a boring way to play.
1. I feel like “trial and error” is often not a great way to solve puzzles. If you can brute force your way to a solution, that’s usually a sign of poor puzzle design. To be clear, I’m not saying whether this one is easy to brute force, just saying if it is, that’s a different problem.
2. Even if brute force was a viable option for solving, an easy fix is to have a “submit” button when you think you’ve solved it (and that can track strikes for invalid submissions).
> This is how most of Simon Tatham’s puzzles work, and that works well.
They btw also have a feature that swaps main and secondary action when toggled, which could work here.
Yeah, I made a mistake figuring out the UI. But then I (correctly) solved the puzzle and it said "1 mistake" but it didn't say what that mistake was. This is confusing.
It would be far too easy to accidentally tap the screen and burn a Mistake, and if its your last one that would be frustrating.