1. Intermediate Game Design Puzzles and Permutations
Week 3: September 21, 2015
Intermediate Game Design Puzzles and Permutations
Fall Mondays & Wednesdays 12:30 PM-3:15 PM
Instructor: Naomi Clark /
Teaching Assistant: Reynaldo Vargas

2. Today’s Class Week 4: Puzzles
Thinking “outside the box” and playfulness
Solutions, and who comes up with them
Honest and Dishonest Puzzle Design… and do you agree?
Non-verbal puzzle hints and cues
Puzzle design exercise from week 1, continued!

3. Riddles

4. Whoever makes it, tells it not. Whoever takes it, knows it not.
Riddles
Whoever makes it, tells it not.
Whoever takes it, knows it not.
Whoever knows it, wants it not.

5. Thinking outside the box
A man walks into a bar, and asks the bartender for a drink of water. The bartender pulls out a gun, points it at the man, and cocks it. The man pauses, before saying "Thank you" and leaving. What happened?
You may ask yes/no questions.

6. What is a puzzle? Definition time.

7. What is a puzzle? Definition time.
A static logic structure that players can solve with the assistance of clues. Puzzles aren’t dynamic: they don’t respond to player actions.
Chris Crawford

8. What is a puzzle? Definition time.
A static logic structure that players can solve with the assistance of clues. Puzzles aren’t dynamic: they don’t respond to player actions.
An activity that’s fun and has a right answer.
Scott Kim

9. What is a puzzle? Definition time.
A static logic structure that players can solve with the assistance of clues. Puzzles aren’t dynamic: they don’t respond to player actions.
An activity that’s fun and has a right answer.
Labyrinth (only one answer)
Maze (only one right answer)

10. What is a puzzle? Definition time.
A static logic structure that players can solve with the assistance of clues. Puzzles aren’t dynamic: they don’t respond to player actions.
An activity that’s fun and has a right answer.
Scott Kim

11. What is a puzzle? Definition time.
A static logic structure that players can solve with the assistance of clues. Puzzles aren’t dynamic: they don’t respond to player actions.
An activity that’s fun and has a right answer.

12. I have a ring, but I have no fingers. Who am I?
Riddles
I have a ring, but I have no fingers.
Who am I?

13. What is a puzzle? Definition time.
A static logic structure that players can solve with the assistance of clues. Puzzles aren’t dynamic: they don’t respond to player actions.
An activity that’s fun and has a right answer.
A game (or subgame) that has a dominant strategy.
(the player has choices, but one of them is clearly better than the rest—it’s the only way to achieve the goal, or it’s more efficient, reliable, less failure-prone, etc)
Jesse Schell

14. What is a puzzle? Definition time.
A static logic structure that players can solve with the assistance of clues. Puzzles aren’t dynamic: they don’t respond to player actions.
An activity that’s fun and has a right answer.
A game (or subgame) that has a dominant strategy.
(the player has choices, but one of them is clearly better than the rest—it’s the only way to achieve the goal, or it’s more efficient, reliable, less failure-prone, etc)

15. What is a puzzle? Definition time.
A static logic structure that players can solve with the assistance of clues. Puzzles aren’t dynamic: they don’t respond to player actions.
An activity that’s fun and has a right answer.
A game that has a dominant strategy.
(the player has choices, but one of them is clearly better than the rest—it’s the only way to achieve the goal, or it’s more efficient, reliable, less failure-prone, etc)
A playable activity where the creator has ensured a solution.

16. Types of Puzzle Games HETEROGENOUS Puzzle Games
Contain a series of pre-designed puzzles, each with different mechanics. Common trope: solve to proceed with the story.

17. PROCEDURAL Puzzle Games
Puzzles and Process
Solitaire – maybe the oldest “randomly generated puzzle game”
One correct
Solution, but different every time!
Minesweeper
PROCEDURAL Puzzle Games
Tetris
A constant flow of problems to solve—theoretically, always solvable?

18. PROCEDURAL Puzzle Games
Puzzles and Process
Spelunky and other modern roguelikes—the procedural aspect often also involves a solvable “puzzle” in space, enemies
PROCEDURAL Puzzle Games

19. Types of Puzzle Games PROCEDURAL Puzzle Games COMBINATORIAL
HETEROGENOUS
Puzzle Games
Same mechanics but a newly generated, different version of the problem to solve every time
A core set of mechanics, used over and over in different combinations and arrangements to produce many pre-designed puzzles.
Contain a series of pre-designed (non-procedural) puzzles, each with different mechanics

20. Combinatorial Puzzle Games
A core set of mechanics, used over and over in different combinations and arrangements to produce many pre-designed puzzles.

21. Honest Puzzle Game Design?
PROCEDURAL
Puzzle Games
COMBINATORIAL
Puzzle Games
HETEROGENOUS
Puzzle Games
Same mechanics but a newly generated, different version of the problem to solve every time
A core set of mechanics, used over and over in different combinations and arrangements to produce many pre-designed puzzles.
Contain a series of pre-designed (non-procedural) puzzles, each with different mechanics

22. Honest Puzzle Game Design?
Matthew Vandevander
COMBINATORIAL
Puzzle Games
HETEROGENOUS
Puzzle Games
A core set of mechanics, used over and over in different combinations and arrangements to produce many pre-designed puzzles.
Contain a series of pre-designed (non-procedural) puzzles, each with different mechanics

23. Techniques for Combinatorial Design
Treat it like a toy: play with mechanics, see what you can do
Find dynamics: the consequences of rules, verbs, objects interacting
Add more mechanics: each new one adds more dynamics (combinatorial)
Note: it’s very easy to add too many (“muddy” combinatorials)
Find interesting challenges using the dynamics; push your own skills
Teach the player how to learn the same things that you did, step by step
Refine and distill: cut away all the excess, trim down to the very best.
Also: playtest, playtest, playtest. Puzzle games require a lot of “Kleenex.”

24. Designing Forward vs. Designing Backwards

25. Designing Forward vs. Designing Backwards

26. Designing Forward vs. Designing Backwards
Every Portal level boils down to “get to the exit”
What’s between the player and the exit? Door, which you need to open by doing X, etc.
The raw materials for these difficulties is non-arbitrary, but “designed forward”

27. Minimalism and Repetition

28. Minimalism and Repetition

29. Techniques for Puzzle Game Design: Focus
1. Draw the player’s attention to the right place
Puzzle games often try to avoid “clutter” – it can be misleading or slow the player down with trying to figure out what’s unimportant
Color, space, and camera can all be used to point out to the player what’s significant & useful
As you enter a room in Q.U.B.E. you see the elements you’re likely to have to work with.
Visual style: reminiscent of…?
“Red herrings” and “decoys” can increase difficulty, but use with caution?

30. Techniques for Puzzle Game Design: Q.U.B.E.

31. Techniques for Puzzle Game Design
2. Draw the player’s attention to the right place
Puzzle games often try to avoid “clutter” – it can be misleading or slow the player down with trying to figure out what’s unimportant
Color, space, and camera can all be used to point out to the player what’s significant & useful
Another example from MFQT

32. Techniques for Puzzle Game Design: Visual Cues of Affordance

33. Techniques for Puzzle Game Design: Visual Cues of Affordance

34. Techniques for Puzzle Game Design: Q.U.B.E.

35. Last Words

36. Visual Cues

37. Visual Cues: Signaling Danger
Enemy (mean eyebrows)
Can jump on
Can’t jump on (spikes)
Can’t jump on (spiky teeth)
??? jump on (round top, no teeth)
(looks like previous plant)

38. Visual Feedback: Teaching Visual Motifs (Zaga-33)
Enemies (move when you do)
Power-ups (don’t move)

39. Visual Feedback

40. Visual Feedback

41. Visual Feedback

42. Techniques for Puzzle Game Design
3. Create, create, create and cut, cut, cut
There’s a lot of experimenting with level design in puzzle games and then throwing out at least 20% of what’s made
Being able to try out ideas quickly is important: paper prototypes, even Excel prototypes

43. Techniques for Puzzle Game Design: Cogs

44. Techniques for Puzzle Game Design
4. Playtest, playtest, playtest
Puzzle game solutions are by nature “obvious” to the designer
Players who learn how to play can’t be testers again: Kleenex time!
Need to get a lot of data

45. Remember the sliding puzzle game?
GET OUT: Revisited
Remember the sliding puzzle game?
New pairs: if you have your previous level work with you, feel free to refer to it or draw ideas from it, but also OK to start fresh
Decide on two special objects you want to add—powerups, enemies, obstacles, special terrain, etc. These can be represented by the paper tokens, or drawn directly on your board.
Make one level with just one of these objects, to explore and teach what can be done.
Make a second level with both objects. Are there interesting combos that emerge?