Implementasi Argoritma Steepest-Ascent Hill Climbing Puzzle Game Untuk Memperkenalkan Kuliner Kota SukabumiNinaHermiatiauthorOptimization of Puzzle Game Mechanics for Culinary Promotion in Sukabumi City Using the Steepest-Ascent Hill Climbing Algorithm Nina Hermiati 1 , Sufiatul Maryana2* , Asep Saepulrohman3 1 Dept. of Computer Science, Fac. of Mathematics & Natural Sciences, Universitas Pakuan, Bogor: [nina.065119026 @unpak.ac.id] 2 Vocational School in Computer Engineering, Universitas Pakuan, Bogor: [sufiatul.maryana@unpak.ac.id] 3 Dept. of Computer Science, Fac. of Mathematics & Natural Sciences, Universitas Pakuan, Bogor: [asepspl@unpak.ac.id] * Correspondence: [sufiatul.maryana@unpak.ac.id] Abstract: This study proposes a mobile sliding-tile puzzle game designed to introduce selected culinary items from Sukabumi City and integrates a heuristic solver based on Steepest-Ascent Hill Climbing (SAHC). The game is implemented in Unity for Android and provides two board sizes: 3×3 (8-puzzle) and 4×4 (15-puzzle). Each mode contains ten culinary-image puzzles and applies a shuffle procedure to generate initial configurations before solving. The solver formulates each board configuration as a state and evaluates all neighboring successor states at each step, selecting the best successor that most improves proximity to the goal configuration. Two heuristic functions are employed: h₁(n) (number of misplaced tiles) and h₂(n) (total Manhattan distance). Validation testing was conducted to verify successful algorithm integration and to quantify solver completion time. Ten trials were performed for each puzzle size. The solver successfully reached the goal state in all trials, with an average completion time of 12.4 s for the 3×3 puzzle and 19.1 s for the 4×4 puzzle. The longer time for the 4×4 case is consistent with the larger state space and increased search effort. Overall, the results indicate that SAHC with standard heuristic evaluations can be effectively embedded as an automated solving mechanism in a culinary-themed sliding-puzzle game. Keywords: Steepest-Ascent Hill Climbing; heuristic search; Manhattan distance; sliding puzzle; mobile serious game; culinary heritage; Unity [ Received: xxxx; Revised: xxxx ; Accepted: xxxx ; PublishedIlmu Komputer2025-06-16Universitas Pakuan;Fakultas Matematika dan Pengetahuan AlamThesis