Full design for a one-stroke sand-raking puzzle game: a novice monk walks into a dry garden and must rake his way back out to the gate. Solver experiments show the bare rule is loose (1.5 million rakings of a 7×7 garden), but scoring by turns recovers the traditional ripple and wave patterns, and a 'wide rake' rule forbidding U-turns in open sand yields unique, garden-like solutions. Covers rules, mechanics, progression, level generation & grading, interface (including hints that are proofs about the player's own route), presentation, a production plan, and prior art, with a playable prototype.
Raking a Zen dry garden is a chore with the shape of a puzzle: a novice who walks into the sand leaves footprints, and must rake his way back out to the gate without crossing his own lines or raking anything twice. We design Samon (“sand patterns”), a puzzle game built on that rule: the player draws one stroke from the gate covering every cell of sand; the monk walks it in, sets down the rake, and walks backwards out, revealing the pattern.
