1. Puzzle Design
Modified from Jesse Schell’s.

2. Puzzle Principles 1) Make the goal easily understood
2) Make it easy to get started
3) Give a sense of progress
4) Give a sense of solvability
5) Increase difficulty gradually
6) Parallelism lets the player rest
7) Pyramid structure can be good
8) Hints can be good
9) Give the answer

3. 1) Make the goal easily understood

4. What is the goal?

5. What is the goal?

6. 2) Make it easy to get started
Salen and Zimmerman’s definition of play:
“Play is free movement within a more rigid structure.”

7. Easy to get started…

8. Hard to get started

9. 3) Give a sense of progress
Riddle vs. puzzle

10. 4) Give a sense of solvability

12. 5) Increase Difficulty Gradually
Dull
Challenging
Player’s skill
Line of playability
Frustrating
Game Progress

13. 5) Increase difficulty gradually

16. 6) Parallelism lets the player rest
More than one thing to focus on
If you are stumped in one place, you can go to something else, and then come back
What you changed in the other place may shed new light on the old problem.
More than one thing to focus on – this way if you are stumped in one place, you can go to something else, and then come back – and what you changed in the other place may shed new light on the old problem.

19. 7) Pyramid structure can be good
Several little puzzles that are each part of one larger puzzle. You get a lot of satisfaction by solving the little puzzles one at a time, and simultaneously getting clues to the final puzzle.

22. 8) Hints can be good

23. 9) Give the answer It’s fun just to hear the answer!
Imagine RPGs without hints or walkthroughs – they would end in frustration for all but the most persistent.
Consider mystery novels – they are really puzzles – but the pleasure is not is solving them, but seeing them solved.