What causes a puzzle out-of-moves loss not triggering on the last move?

The remaining-moves counter is checked before the move resolves and decrements, so the player gets one extra action and the loss fires a turn late.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix a Puzzle Out-of-Moves Loss Not Triggering on the Last Move

Quick answer: Decrement the move counter after a move fully resolves, then check the objective; if the goal is met, win, otherwise if moves are now zero, trigger the loss.

Move-limited puzzles end when moves run out and the goal is unmet. An off-by-one here either steals a move from the player or grants a free one. Resolve the move, check the goal, then check for zero moves.

How to fix it

1. Decrement after the move resolves

Subtract one move only once the swap and all resulting cascades have finished, so a single player action counts as exactly one move.

2. Check the objective before the loss

After resolving, test the level goal first. If it is met, the player wins even on the final move, regardless of remaining count.

3. Then test for zero moves

If the goal is not met and the move counter has reached zero, trigger the out-of-moves loss. Block further input until the result screen is dismissed.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every Construct 3 error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

Reproduce it once with full context and the fix writes itself. The hunt is the expensive part.