I've watched a few of yours and others videos and articles about puzzles, but I'm not feeling like anyone really knows or can explain the idea of puzzle design. What is the mystery and secret of puzzle design? Say I want to include some puzzles in a game, say many other people do also, where are the resources to really understand puzzles? I've read a bunch of articles and they're mostly all talking about old point and click adventures with inventory "puzzles" and stuff like that. If you know and understand about puzzles it would be great if you could talk more about this kind of thing.
@@Game-wisdom Thank you. It seems to be a pretty complex thing that I think a lot of people take for granted, like when you see a great game like Talos Principle or something, but when it comes to actually designing them it's a pretty difficult thing. I've been watching videos about Braid and The Witness creator Jonathan Blow, who said something about Braid designing itself, once the reverse time mechanic had been created and played with in play testing, and also I've been watching Croteam interview about The Talos Principle, BaBa is You creator talk at GAMELAB19, also Raph Koster talking about Teaching to Fish, etc. I searched a lot for articles and stuff but like I said a lot of it is about old point and click adventures, and I don't even consider a lot of that stuff as an actual puzzle but more find some object to use with some other object. I will read your article and keep an eye out for future videos also. I appreciate every little bit of knowledge and information everyone shares. Thanks.
I'd suggest playing some more puzzle games for inspiration. Also, look outside of video games to things like riddles, or thought puzzles. It helps you to understand what might make a puzzle good
I always found the things most resembling "puzzles" very dull in adventure games. That's in spite of having at least been a former mega-fan (especially of Sierra titles followed by LucasArts, although 7th Guest turned me off right away). Typically what I found interesting in those was challenging more observation and memory (and possibly note-taking skills when memory falls short) than what we might classify as puzzle-solving. For example, I might find in a point-and-click adventure that I can't climb a certain wall because it's too steep to climb. Later in the game, I encounter a rope, and then further on, a grappling hook. It doesn't take much in the realm of puzzle-solving to combine rope and hook together and now go back to the former section and use the new grappling hook to scale the wall. That's extremely intuitive and hardly any more or less puzzle-like than a Metroidvania where we get high jump boots and remember that we encountered a high platform too high to formerly jump on earlier in the game. I guess some might call that a "puzzle" but I think such things are too intuitive -- provided we just remember the earlier sections we experienced in the game or took notes about it -- to be called a real puzzle of the kind that taxes the skills required to ace an IQ test or to become a grandmaster in chess or to solve crossword puzzles or challenging riddles. I think the concept of an adventure game as a medium to tell stories with a series of "interactive puzzles" in between the storytelling is a very uninteresting way to design such games with The 7th Guest epitomizing that design mindset when taken too literally and rigidly. I actually dislike the word, "puzzle", in general in such contexts along with "quests" in other games like RPGs because I think it's easy for someone embracing this mindset to fall into a very disjointed kind of trap where their "puzzles" or "quests" seem to fit poorly in a very jarring and disjointed way on top of what's going on. There seems to be something to such words that lends itself to game challenges being very independent of the narrative with such words (apologies if I'm being too analytical of these terms; English isn't my first language and maybe that's why I am being too analytical about it). I guess we need such words to talk about game design but I think designers can get hung up on such words in jarring ways that break immersion. I haven't found better words in English for such things but I think focusing so much on these words can risk disjointed designs that feel more disruptive rather than contributing to the user's experience like the "puzzles" or "quests" are interruptions to the user experience rather than an interwoven part of it. Every time a dev tries to introduce a real puzzle in the game far beyond the above, whether in a really old game like the original Space Quest (1986) or a really new like Broken Sword, I always felt like it's either interesting (like an IQ test) but thoroughly disjointed from the universe or a guessing game as to the one exact thing the designers expect me to do (unlike an IQ test). I've never seen a single example of a beautiful balance in single-solution puzzles. I have found some in multi-solution puzzles like those presented in QFG, and in immersive sims like Fallout 1. In Fallout 1, I remember one time that I had to get into a guarded territory and I was playing a weak character ill-suited for blasting my way through the situation, and not charismatic enough to talk my way through it, or scientific enough to hack my way through it. But I did have some ability to sneak and pickpocket, and so I snuck behind a guard and planted a timed explosive in his backpack and snuck away, only for the explosion to kill everyone guarding the area. Then I felt all creative and rewarded for it and I really liked that feeling. It wasn't like I had to guess the exact thing the devs wanted me to do so much as them giving me toys and a massive variety of possible solutions, and maybe even came up with one the devs didn't even anticipate in advance.
great overview of good puzzle making. I am a DM trying to make world driven puzzles.
I've watched a few of yours and others videos and articles about puzzles, but I'm not feeling like anyone really knows or can explain the idea of puzzle design. What is the mystery and secret of puzzle design? Say I want to include some puzzles in a game, say many other people do also, where are the resources to really understand puzzles? I've read a bunch of articles and they're mostly all talking about old point and click adventures with inventory "puzzles" and stuff like that. If you know and understand about puzzles it would be great if you could talk more about this kind of thing.
I finished recording a piece talking further about puzzle design which should be going up soon.
And here is a piece I wrote lately about it in case you missed it game-wisdom.com/critical/puzzles-design-videogames
@@Game-wisdom Thank you. It seems to be a pretty complex thing that I think a lot of people take for granted, like when you see a great game like Talos Principle or something, but when it comes to actually designing them it's a pretty difficult thing. I've been watching videos about Braid and The Witness creator Jonathan Blow, who said something about Braid designing itself, once the reverse time mechanic had been created and played with in play testing, and also I've been watching Croteam interview about The Talos Principle, BaBa is You creator talk at GAMELAB19, also Raph Koster talking about Teaching to Fish, etc. I searched a lot for articles and stuff but like I said a lot of it is about old point and click adventures, and I don't even consider a lot of that stuff as an actual puzzle but more find some object to use with some other object. I will read your article and keep an eye out for future videos also. I appreciate every little bit of knowledge and information everyone shares. Thanks.
I'd suggest playing some more puzzle games for inspiration. Also, look outside of video games to things like riddles, or thought puzzles. It helps you to understand what might make a puzzle good
I always found the things most resembling "puzzles" very dull in adventure games. That's in spite of having at least been a former mega-fan (especially of Sierra titles followed by LucasArts, although 7th Guest turned me off right away). Typically what I found interesting in those was challenging more observation and memory (and possibly note-taking skills when memory falls short) than what we might classify as puzzle-solving. For example, I might find in a point-and-click adventure that I can't climb a certain wall because it's too steep to climb. Later in the game, I encounter a rope, and then further on, a grappling hook.
It doesn't take much in the realm of puzzle-solving to combine rope and hook together and now go back to the former section and use the new grappling hook to scale the wall. That's extremely intuitive and hardly any more or less puzzle-like than a Metroidvania where we get high jump boots and remember that we encountered a high platform too high to formerly jump on earlier in the game. I guess some might call that a "puzzle" but I think such things are too intuitive -- provided we just remember the earlier sections we experienced in the game or took notes about it -- to be called a real puzzle of the kind that taxes the skills required to ace an IQ test or to become a grandmaster in chess or to solve crossword puzzles or challenging riddles.
I think the concept of an adventure game as a medium to tell stories with a series of "interactive puzzles" in between the storytelling is a very uninteresting way to design such games with The 7th Guest epitomizing that design mindset when taken too literally and rigidly. I actually dislike the word, "puzzle", in general in such contexts along with "quests" in other games like RPGs because I think it's easy for someone embracing this mindset to fall into a very disjointed kind of trap where their "puzzles" or "quests" seem to fit poorly in a very jarring and disjointed way on top of what's going on. There seems to be something to such words that lends itself to game challenges being very independent of the narrative with such words (apologies if I'm being too analytical of these terms; English isn't my first language and maybe that's why I am being too analytical about it). I guess we need such words to talk about game design but I think designers can get hung up on such words in jarring ways that break immersion. I haven't found better words in English for such things but I think focusing so much on these words can risk disjointed designs that feel more disruptive rather than contributing to the user's experience like the "puzzles" or "quests" are interruptions to the user experience rather than an interwoven part of it.
Every time a dev tries to introduce a real puzzle in the game far beyond the above, whether in a really old game like the original Space Quest (1986) or a really new like Broken Sword, I always felt like it's either interesting (like an IQ test) but thoroughly disjointed from the universe or a guessing game as to the one exact thing the designers expect me to do (unlike an IQ test). I've never seen a single example of a beautiful balance in single-solution puzzles.
I have found some in multi-solution puzzles like those presented in QFG, and in immersive sims like Fallout 1. In Fallout 1, I remember one time that I had to get into a guarded territory and I was playing a weak character ill-suited for blasting my way through the situation, and not charismatic enough to talk my way through it, or scientific enough to hack my way through it. But I did have some ability to sneak and pickpocket, and so I snuck behind a guard and planted a timed explosive in his backpack and snuck away, only for the explosion to kill everyone guarding the area. Then I felt all creative and rewarded for it and I really liked that feeling. It wasn't like I had to guess the exact thing the devs wanted me to do so much as them giving me toys and a massive variety of possible solutions, and maybe even came up with one the devs didn't even anticipate in advance.