TWISTERPICTURE - A spinning picture puzzle game

Two posts today.

This is the original game. I also posted a simplified version as a tutorial: TWISTERPICTURE TUTORIAL

You can download to play from here: TWISTERPICTURE

Warning: It can take a moment to open as there are so many triggered animations (4 x 112 squares).

I wonder if this is how the first person to ever come up with the maze game mechanic feels when seeing the rest of the world remaking his 'invention' whilst putting their own spin on it. And I really wonder whether spin-puzzle games will be the next big hit genre in powerpoint game creation, due to how easy anyone could replicate it, just like the maze games.
Onto the actual game!

It's very laggy, embed in the bottom is my walkthrough from the middle of solving (didn't finish it so I don't know whether or not there are any congratulatory messages at the end, blame me for forgetting about the clouds). Timer doesn't run unfortunately, most likely because my PC already has its hands full with the overwhelming amount of the puzzle's triggers alone. I was wondering how can one optimize this, but I hadn't figured it out other than "reduce animations and puzzle pieces" and even I could tell that wasn't a very constructive criticism.

The picture is a collage, in which there are parts of the statues that just cuts off at the edge of some of the puzzle pieces. I was a bit infuriated when it looks like the picture still didn't connect despite having the other end of the parts already forming clear images, so I spin it again a few more times before realizing the picture is actually a collage with dirty clear cropping marks, I was bamboozled! I can't say for certain whether this is a valid method to ramp up the difficulty of the puzzle, or whether its just plain unfair for the players, so take it with a grain of salt. But anyways, that's how I feel about the pictures.

The UI elements are very johnr-like (particularly referencing the textwall guide's graphic), I somehow feel the need to express that. Maybe I should write some sort of essay about johnr's design principle somewhere...

Thanks for the feedback.

I get your point about the collage and the tricky areas where the images overlap. They irritate me too! The link to the reference picture can help with this. If you see my video you'll notice that I use it quite a lot towards the end. Unfortunately there isn't any kind of celebratory message on completion as I don't think it's possible.

If I were to do this again I'd probably use a different picture but after duplicating this one 112 times then making the individual squares via 'Intersect' and doing all the animations and setting them in their starting positions and playing it and only then discovering the 'difficult' squares, I didn't feel inclined to start again. At least it's not too easy!

I appreciate the notion of starting a new genre but I'm sure that others have used it before me. I did however use this method on a couple of my early games:

Ah silly me, I completely forgot celebratory message end sequence is impossible when the puzzle is positioned like this.

I feel you about making these puzzle levels, they're very impractical and exhausting to work with, but the results speak for themselves.

I don't know if you know, since I didn't see you commenting. But I used this exact spin-puzzle system on my game "Picture Plates" I shared earlier this month.