I’ve been playing some of the more recent adventure games and feel like the quality of the puzzles has gone down. It often seems a bit like use multitool on object to solve every puzzle. Equally, I can think many older games where the puzzle was so illogical it broke the gameplay and felt jarring to me.
So what makes a good puzzle? What are you most satisfying puzzles ever? What about your least favourite?
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I also disliked the old point’n’click “puzzles” where you had to eg. use some completely random object on another completely random object to get ahead, and there was really no way to logically deduce what the hell you were supposed to do so it was just a question of using everything on everything until something happened. I’ve always been partial to how Cyan (makers of eg. the Myst series) does puzzles; nowadays it seems like puzzle games are really dumbed down and barely qualify as puzzles with the amount of hand-holding they do, but if I play eg. Myst or Obduction I pretty much have to use a notebook to keep all my clues straight.
So, I guess for me a good puzzle is one that’s actually challenging but logical, and I especially enjoy ones that tie together multiple different things from different areas of the game and aren’t self-contained, ie. you have to combine knowledge you picked up along the way to solve it.
So my preferences are maybe a bit more on the “hardcore puzzle” side, I guess. I just love a challenge.
The Myst games probably qualify as my most satisfying puzzle experiences, although I can’t really name any one specific puzzle.
I like how totk brought back actual puzzle dungeons like the classic Zelda games. I also liked the puzzles in the old tomb raider games.
Oh, in Detective Grimoire’s Tangle Tower, I loved their hint system. I’ve heard some people did not like the hint system as it held their hands through out the game, but as I only used it when I felt really lost, the hint system helped me steer towards places I needed to go without advancing / progressing the story plot ahead of me.
A hint system is an interesting one. I think the most effective ones are ones that don’t feel like just looking up the solution. I’m playing Beyond A Steel Sky at the moment and I do like Joey acting as a very gentle reminder “what am I meant to be doing” alongside there being an overarching goal when load even if its quite open ended.
GMTK has done some videos on this, and does great observations on the gameplay designs of some games.
- How Nintendo solved Zelda’s open world problem
- Designing Difficulty in his magnet themed puzzle game
For me, a good puzzle is when the concept is introduced to me bit by bit, then extended from there. Unfortunately this can be a bit of a fine balance as some game will literally dedicate too many levels for each new concept, and so the puzzles bore out easily.
In other news, I’ve really been enjoying Paquerette Down the Bunburrows. Don’t mind the “( ≧∀≦) I luv bunnies <3 <3” theme, the puzzles are neat and gets progressively harder, and has nice collectibles and secrets that greatly extends the gameplay.
Thanks, I don’t know these videos will watch.
Agree about the delicate balance of reusing a gimmick too much and it getting cumbersome. I recently replayed Broken Sword 3 and the moving blocks puzzles got very hiring fast but that might have also been the control system and speed of them.
