Door puzzle ideas...

Started by Slasher, Sun 01/06/2014 10:38:26

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Slasher

Hi,

I'm hoping you guys will contribute some puzzle ideas for a game I am making.

It's that old chestnut opening locked/closed doors.

Think along the lines of Escape the Mansion.

In this game each door (there are quite a few doors) has a puzzle on it that when solved will dissolve that door allowing you to go beyond it to another room.

Now, each door's puzzle could be solved by either within the puzzle itself (moving tiles, pushing the right button, answering a question etc etc) or by interacting with it with an inventory item (like putting an inventory item into a gargoyle's mouth etc etc) that you got from another room.

So, what I am looking for is some puzzle ideas/solutions for opening the doors and going to the room beyond it.

Level of puzzles should be quite difficult, realistic, if at times a bit unorthodox but not real stupid (roll)

Do you have some ideas that could be incorporated?

cheers

slasher ;)



Mandle

Yeah right...

That's like Coca-Cola just handing their recipe over to Pepsi because they are just such nice guys...

:P

Slasher

#2
I don't need the 'how to' just the ingredients, like to get some general ideas;)


Mandle

Quote from: slasher on Sun 01/06/2014 12:37:40
I don't need the 'how to' just the ingredients, like to get some general ideas;)

I was just yanking your chain mate...

Actually, now that I think of it...The hero could yank on a chain to get the door open!!!

Me = Genius Award!!!

AprilSkies

One vote for Mandle in the Genius awards.

www.apemarina.altervista.org

monkey424

Maybe watch the 1986 film Labyrinth for inspiration. There are some talkative puzzle doors in that movie. :)
    

CaptainD

One of the doors isn't really there.  It's all an illusion.

Another has to be broken through by using a suit of armour as a battering ram. :-D
 

Eric


  • Door decorated with a poem whose blank final word can only be finished / door unlocked by an object that supplies the end rhyme.
  • Door made of glass can only be broken by a note resonating at the correct frequency.
  • Door with a military-time clock lock only opens once a day / according to player's system time.
  • Door with a mysterious hole in the middle. The hole leads to a puppet on the other side that the player must use to convince a small child to unlock the door (Child is, of course, heard through the door, but not seen when the door is opened. Spooky!).

Intense Degree

Quote from: Eric on Sun 01/06/2014 22:13:29
Door with a mysterious hole in the middle. The hole leads to a puppet on the other side that the player must use to convince a small child to unlock the door (Child is, of course, heard through the door, but not seen when the door is opened. Spooky!).

Very nice, if I ever finish another game I am stealing that one! ;)

Andail

Eric, go finish that game of yours!!
I love those puzzle ideas.

Sane Co.

A head on the door has control of the door and doesn't want you to go in. He makes a "Hrngh" sound that correlates to you trying to open the door. The sound should denote that the head is actively keeping the door shut. The player must then find a "blindfold" and "earplugs" and attatch them to the head. This make it so the head is not aware of the players presence.

A door with a musical note plays a sequence of beats hidden under the soundtrack. The player must turn down the music volume (you could also have a source of sound, such as a record player located somewhere within the building) to hear to code. The player then uses that series of beats as a code to open the door via knocking.

Eric

Quote from: Andail on Mon 02/06/2014 19:07:28
Eric, go finish that game of yours!!
I love those puzzle ideas.

It goes so slowly because every time I make progress, I level up in drawing ability and start over! I haven't even started learning to program really yet, and I've been here for years. BUT! My plan is to start a GIP thread on my birthday a week-and-a-half from now.

Those door puzzle ideas are open source! I saved my favorite ones for myself!

Iron Lawnmower

What if there is a door that plays with players expectations. Like it looks all overly complex and elaborate to solve and by this stage in the game the players inventory will be absolutely full of random junk. They will spend hours trying inventory items on it and pixel hunting for something they missed. Then it will turn out all they had to do was 'use' the door. Guaranteed insanity.

CaptainD

Quote from: Iron Lawnmower on Sat 07/06/2014 16:56:59
What if there is a door that plays with players expectations. Like it looks all overly complex and elaborate to solve and by this stage in the game the players inventory will be absolutely full of random junk. They will spend hours trying inventory items on it and pixel hunting for something they missed. Then it will turn out all they had to do was 'use' the door. Guaranteed insanity.

Genius!  But disturbing. :P
 

Iron Lawnmower


CaptainD

Maybe you could have one arcade section where all you have to do is click on the door to open it, but the door moves around the screen.
 

Stupot

I've recently played quite a few escape games on iPhone which are basically just a series of doors (the last one I played was called "Dooors") and they often cleverly require you to use aspects of the phone's functions in order solve the puzzles, such as shaking the phone in order to shake a tree on the screen so something will fall out, or tilting the phone so that a key or other item will slide along the floor from outside the screen. Also, there are often puzzles that require to actually click outside of the game screen, and interact with the logo or the main menu or the help screen.  Perhaps you could take some inspiration from them (I know AGS can't detect when you shake your monitor, but there is still plenty of outside-the-box puzzles you could implement). If you can't or don't want to play it on your mobile device, just look for the YouTube walkthroughs.

Eric

Stu, did you see the recent NY Times article on real-life Escape the Room experiences? Apparently, they're popping up in a few of the bigger cities in the United States. You get locked in with a team to get yourself out of the room, and if you don't get yourself out, they unlock you in an hour. Sounded fun!

Mandle

#18
If the game had a score that increased each time you unlock a door:

Then you could have a door that was already unlocked or standing open. The player can easily pass the door but the score does not increase, leaving the player with an incomplete score at the game's end.

To get the points the player must find a key somewhere past the door, go back, close the door, lock it, and then unlock it to get the points.

:-D

Or the mastermind behind the maze kills the player at the end of the game (or refuses to let them leave yet if you are not that nasty) as they have not fulfilled the challenge of "unlocking all the doors"...

Anyways, I think you get the idea...

Eric

Ooh, reverse the genre: something's after you, and you have to solve puzzles to lock the doors.

Or! Use Wyz's socket thingamajig and make it a two-player game. Two players racing each other in two different series of locked door puzzles to the center, where the prize awaits them.

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