Puzzle Design

[Legend]

I was thinking of the puzzle aspects of games. some are smartly done which got me thinking; are these puzzle creation part of the job of a game designer, or do they usually outsource them to another group- say like math major students, puzzle makers, etc.?

I am not talking about the simple ones like pushing a button or re-arranging a picture. some seem mathematically clever and feel some effort were put into them- especially talking about pure puzzle games.
could that be part of the job of a game designer, or is it another aspect like music, FX, animation, etc. that can be handled by a more focused group?

thanks.

 

[archangelmorph]

I was thinking of the puzzle aspects of games. some are smartly done which got me thinking; are these puzzle creation part of the job of a game designer, or do they usually outsource them to another group- say like math major students, puzzle makers, etc.?

I am not talking about the simple ones like pushing a button or re-arranging a picture. some seem mathematically clever and feel some effort were put into them- especially talking about pure puzzle games.
could that be part of the job of a game designer, or is it another aspect like music, FX, animation, etc. that can be handled by a more focused group?

thanks.

For a pure puzzle game I would imagine it's the designer's job. Afterall some of the most addictive & fun puzzlers are pretty simple in their design laying down basic rule from which the player takes the time and effort to understand and then creates his own layers of depth interms of defining complex gameplay strategies etc..

To be honest very few games have sophisticated puzzles nowadays (with most taking the whole puzzle element out of the equation altogether) since most game designers like to push for accessibility and unfortunately run into the popular (yet hardly very entirely accurate) idea that somehow most gamers are stupid and want easy puzzles because it's somehow more fun (than challenging ones, e.g. the puzzles in Silent Hill etc..)

I would love to see a game where the design in itself ACTUALLY forces the player to even look beyond the boundaries of the game (& by that I don't mean a strategy guide, cheat/FAQ web site but in the world around them for example..) in order to solve intelligent puzzles and in doing so provide a means for the user to actually learn something in the process (actually adding to their life instead of taking away from it which most games do.. Well at least in terms of time anyways..)

Imagine a game where you play as a lawyer (think a grown up version of phoenix wright & you're there) and you have to gather evidence & information in order to solve a case but with only incomplete evidence provided in the game.. The game would guide the user to use his own resourceful initiative & general knowledge to discover and understand the context of the problems, seek out the missing information (possibly in the form of figuring out how two evidences are connected..) and then fill in the blanks in order to truely progress through the adventure..

It would take a hell of a job to balance and design well enough to make the whole experience playable by the average (i.e. educated up to at least secondary education level with a reasonable size of worldly/general knowledge..) person and still make it challenging (not to mention providing the user with enough of a motivation to go out of his/her way to actually look up the answers) but if done well would be awesome..

 

[Paul_G]

I remember playing the flash game bloxorz and being constantly impressed with how clever the design was. I did wonder how the designer might go about making that sort of thing. How does he know it's possible? How does he know there isn't some other way to easily complete a level that he hasn't thought of? How does he balance the difficulty curve? I would imagine that in some instances, a computer could be used to make the levels. Brute force would be a good way of proving the first question certainly

I should think in the case of bloxorz, it was all the work of the designer. There probably aren't really *that* many full price puzzle games where the expected sales would justify a person just to do that job these days though

 

[Beafy]

I guess in bloxorz case, a level can be divided into primitives, each primitive allowing the player to accomplish certain maneuvers. This probably needs a few weeks of brainpower, but a systematic approach can certainly make things easier.