Designing Puzzles for Video Games

Prof. Pier Luca Lanzi
Puzzles
Videogame Design and Programming

Readings
•  Jesse Schell. The Art of Game Design
(2nd Edition) Morgan Kaufmann 2015
2

puzzles are wonderful mechanisms
that form key parts of many games

sometimes they are visible
sometimes they are enmeshed into
the gameplay that become invisible

how to make good puzzles?
what are the best ways incorporate
puzzles into games

are puzzles really games?
jigsaw puzzle? Rubik’s cube?

“A puzzle is fun, and has a right answer.”
Scott Kim

once you figure out the best strategy, you can
solve the puzzle every time, and it is no longer fun
when a single strategy will always defeat a game
we say that the game has “dominant strategy”
“dominant strategies” should be generally avoided
as they reduce the replayability of a game

a puzzle is a game with a dominant strategy

Puzzles
•  A puzzle is anything that makes you stop and think,
and mental challenges can add significant variety to an
action-based game
•  In earlier games, puzzles required the players to stop
completely and sometimes appeared incongruous
within the game environment
§ 7th Guest has several puzzles like a giant
chessboard, etc.
•  Then, as gameplay became more fluid, puzzles
became less explicit and more woven into the
gameplay
§ Tombraider
§ Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
§ The Witness by Jonathan Blow

Puzzle Principle #1:
Make the Goal Easily Understood
13

Make It Easy to Get Started
14
•  Once players understood what is the goal of the
puzzle they should be be able to start solving it right
away
•  With some puzzles (like Sam Loyd’s 15) it is very
easy to start although a winning strategy is far from
being obvious
•  With other puzzles, the goal is very clear (e.g., identify
what digit each letter represents) but players might
be disoriented to start solving it

“To design a good puzzle,
first build a good toy.”
Scott Kim

Players should be drawn toward
manipulating the puzzle
Even people who don’t want to “solve”
the Rubik’s cube wants to touch it, hold it, and twist it.

Give a Sense of Progress
19
•  Riddles are questions that demand an answer
•  Puzzles also demand an answer but typically involve
manipulating something toward the solution
•  In puzzles, the players feel that they are getting near to
the solution and this sense of progress gives hope that
they will arrive to the solution
•  Early adventure games had riddles that created “stone
walls”
•  Riddles can be turned into puzzles using an approach
similar to 20 questions
•  Rubik’s cube provides this sense of progress (first solve
one side, then another one, etc.)

Puzzle Principle #4: Give a Sense of Solvability
When players suspect that your puzzle is not solvable,
they become afraid that they are wasting their time and give up
You need to convince players that your puzzle is solvable
Rubik’s cube was sold in its solved state J

Puzzle Principle #5: Increase Difficulty Gradually
Difficulty in games should increase gradually and
puzzles should follow the same principle
How can puzzles increase in difficulty?
They are actually solved or not solved…
Puzzles require a series of actions
that are small step toward the solution
These actions should be increase in difficulty (e.g. in jigsaw puzzle
one first looks for the corners, then the borders, etc.)
Giving players the control over the order of actions is one way
to ensure that the difficulty can gradually increase

Parallelism Lets the Player Rest
22
•  Puzzles make a player stop and think
•  What if players cannot solve the puzzle and they
are unable to make progress in the game? They
might abandon the game.
•  A way to safeguard against this is to provide
several related puzzles at once. This way players
can move between puzzles and rest.
•  “A change is as good as a rest”
§ Crossword and Sudoku do this naturally
§ Video games do this explicitly, it is rare that
a player has only one challenge to solve at
once

Puzzle Principle #7: Pyramid Structure Extends Interest
A series of small puzzles each giving some
kind of clue to a larger puzzle
Thus combining short-term (the easier puzzles) with
long-term goal (the overall puzzle)

Puzzle Principle #8: Hints Extends Interest
When players are about to give up on a puzzle in frustration,
a well-timed hint can renew their hope and their curiosity

Puzzle Principle #9: Give Away the Answer!
You might consider saving your players the trouble of solving the
puzzle, and give them a way to find out the answers from
within your game, if they are truly stumped

Puzzle Principle #10: Perceptual Shifts
are a Double-Edged Sword

Perceptual Shifts are a Double-Edged Sword
•  “Can you arrange six matchsticks so they form four
equilateral triangles?”
•  Puzzles that requires a perceptual shift are double-edged
sword (either you get it or you don’t)
•  When players can make the perceptual shift, they receive
a great deal of pleasure and solve the puzzle
•  When they fail they, they get nothing
•  These puzzles have almost no possibility of progress or
gradual increase in difficulty
•  They are basically riddles and should be rarely used when
players should make continual progress
29

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Designing Puzzles for Video Games

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