Hello my fellow puzzlers. I am new to this holy land so if my question is not the kind you people like to solve, I apologize.
As some of you may know, there is a puzzle named: "lights out" based on a simple set of rules. There is a 5x5 square (usually) and every unit square is either "on" or "off" indicated by two colors (usually white and black/red). Clicking on a unit square changes the color of that square and all connected squares. Your task is to make every unit square white.
The puzzle above is easy to solve. Just click the middle square and every square turns white. But this puzzle:
This puzzle would take hours without a method guiding us. And luckily, we have just that. The method is called: "Chase the lights". And it is easy to execute. You can read about how it works in one of the links below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_Out_(game) http://www.logicgamesonline.com/lightsout/tutorial.html (less detailed)
Now, it is all fine until this point. We can solve every puzzle(if a solution exists.). But, how would we approach something like this:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/551110/Wayout/ (the game which is in the screenshot)
If you try the "chase the lights" method here, your plan will be put to a stop because of the holes. And this is only one level. There are levels that are much more complicated than this one. In some of them the board is not even a square. So, my question is this: How should I think about these puzzles? Do I have to discover a rule for each and every one of them? If so, how? I am just clueless. I hope some smart people here can enlighten me.