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Puzzle Studio

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Puzzle Studio is a game initially developed by Chuck Sommerville. It was meant to be an open-source clone of Chip's Challenge 2 (similar to Tile World with Chip's Challenge 1), which at the time could not be released due to copyright issues with Bridgestone Media.


Chuck Sommerville started the Puzzle Studio project in the summer of 2007. He coded the game's engine, as well as the first five tiles. Joshua Bone added most of the other tiles over the coming months.

Chuck later abandoned Puzzle Studio in favor of Chuck's Challenge 3D. The copyright issues regarding Chip's Challenge 2 were later resolved, allowing for the game to be officially released on Steam on May 28, 2015, along with a re-release of Chip's Challenge 1. The official Puzzle Studio Yahoo group and website were eventually deleted, although archives were later posted by Julian Uy.

Due to the game's open-source nature, Julian Uy was able to pick up development after Chuck gave up on it. He modernized the code, making the graphics engine more powerful and removing dependencies on deprecated Lua libraries, and also added cross-platform support and additional tiles.

Chip's Challenge 3[edit]

In January 2019, it was announced that Chip's Challenge 3 was under development. It is based on a fork of Puzzle Studio,[1] with Chuck Sommerville's son coding additional tiles.[2] In September 2019, however, progress on the game was described as "stalled".[3] As of June 2020, progress is still stalled.[4]

Technical details[edit]

Puzzle Studio is written almost entirely in the Lua programming language with the exception of the program's launcher, which is coded in C++.[5] The game is extremely modular, with each tile coded separately, making it extremely easy to add new tiles. However, this also results in several glitches caused by conflicts between tiles.

Levels are stored in PZM files (plain text files with a PZM extension), the format of which is not compatible with any other format.[6] As with C2M files, each PZM file stores a single level.


Puzzle Studio was coded to be similar to the Lynx ruleset. It features all tiles from Chip's Challenge 1, as well as several tiles from Chip's Challenge 2, including ice blocks, yellow tanks (known in Puzzle Studio as "copycats"), green walls, and logic gates. It also featured several tiles that do not appear in either Chip's Challenge game, including:

  • Ten key and lock colors. These include keys that only monsters can use, and locks that require more than one key.
  • Colored toggle walls. All colors behave in the same way, and are controlled by buttons of the same color, making it possible to have several independent "sets" of toggles. Thin wall/toggle wall hybrids also exist.
  • Lasers. It fires a beam straight ahead until it hits an acting wall. This beam is deadly to the player and monsters in its path. It can also destroy blocks, ice blocks, and bombs, with a slight delay. The laser can be turned on or off with a specific button, and its direction can be changed by pressing against it.
  • Mirrors. These can be pushed around the level, and turn laser beams 90°.
  • Boulders. When a player pushes one, it starts rolling forwards until it hits an acting wall. There are two types of boulders, which are identical apart from rolling speed.[7]
  • One-way signs. These are placed on the edge of a tile, similar to thin walls, and can only be crossed in the direction indicated by the arrows.

Similar to Chip's Challenge 2, custom map sizes are supported. The largest possible map is 100 * 100; the smallest is 1 * 1 (although the smallest solvable level is 1 * 2).[8]



External links[edit]