Question about puzzle design

[pmartin]

I was making a game with a friend, it was a horror game about dreams and all of that cliché stuff. Actually we're still making the game, but we decided to start it all again as we tough it was not as good as we wanted it to be.

One of the things in the game that was 'not-so-good' is the puzzle design. The game is meant to step a little bit away of the adventure game formula and the kind of puzzles we wanted to make were 'unconventional' so to speak. How? Well, first I'll have to explain the setting of the game:

We play as a man who is having really bad nightmares (how original), but the game takes place inside his dreams. In the dream there's this entity, something like his subconscious, that tells him this girl need his help in the real life. But first he needs to wake up, and the really evil entity will only let him wake up when he overcomes his weakness and bla-bla-bla.

So there are several things he'll need to do. The first puzzle we made was he overcoming some troubles with his self image, so the entity hinted him with some really evil and scary monologue and then the player had to pay attention to the dream world to understand what it wanted so he could "win" the nightmare. At the end the player had to break a large mirror in a certain room. Obvious, huh? But it was the first puzzle and it was meant to be easy.

But now I have a problem: How to go on with this concept? I don't want to have fetch puzzles nor use-everything-with-everything kinds of puzzles. I wan't the player to think about the psychological aspects of each dream and interpret it so he can solve the puzzles, and I don't want the puzzles to be extremely hard, because I want to make the hard part of the game come from how scary it is. (Think silent hill, the monsters are quite easy to fight and kill, but you're so scared to face then that they look a lot harder).

Sorry about the looong post, but with my lack of english skills I have to write longer texts so I have the confidence I'm being clear.

[Wyz]

Interesting concept, and as long as stay away from this common pitfall it would be fun: Some games make the player feel if he has to look inside the developer's head to understand the puzzles, that breaks immersion usually. If the puzzles are logical (get some beta tester to point that out an redesign or completely replace puzzles if they don't work for at least half of them) then you would be in the green.

Two puzzles that popped in my head:
Overcome his fear or the unknown: He has to open everyone of several small boxes spread across the dream world.
Fear of the dark: A maze with a few passages each time and he has to take the darkest path every time to to get out of it.

Well good luck, and there's nothing wrong with your English

[pmartin]

That's the one of the things we're trying to avoid! Making the player think with the developer's head. Also, what I meant with a "unconventional" adventure is that I don't want the player to know what to do as soon as he enters the room. Like "Ok, there's a box there, hand icon on box, closed, I need a key" and he starts looking for the key right away, know what I mean?

I think that this kind of thing is what takes out most off the immersion of any game in any genre. The first game I ever played was Full Throttle and I was amazed. It didn't look like the're was a formula or certain laws that I had to follow, just because it was something new. Of course when I replayed the game it didn't have the same effect.

And in my opinion it's what made Deus Ex what it is. They broke the FPS formula and the game could actually surprise you and surpass your expectatives of a genre, making you think a little bit more while playing and creating that childlike happiness when you go "So... new... IT'S ALL SO NEW".

But god, how afraid I am of being too pretencious trying to do this kinds of things. :b

[cat]

I don't have a puzzle advice but regarding horror/dream games you should play Domithan's Living Nightmare games:

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=1294
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=1313

[Zetsaika]

For humans, thinking is something hard. For the most part of everything we don't want to think, just act.
And you will come across a major gaming problem that was never been REALLY solved, and probably can't be solved: You just can check the actions the player did something, not its intentions.

I will take you Mirror puzzle as an example, ok?

What do the player first do? Think? Act? Let's try both situations.
Let's assume that in order to break the Mirror you have to just Interact with it.

Thinking - After realizing where he is, the player will think about what the NPC told him. After some minutes he may not get the point of what to do and he will try things at random. While trying everything, he managed to interact with the mirror and it broke sending him to the next part of the game even without him knowing exactaly why he is doing it. Or he can understand the point before doing something, and be reward with satisfation when things turns like he imagined.

Acting - The player try every possible action with every possible thing on the game and sooner or later he interact with the Mirror, breaking it and being able to advance in game. Without thinking, it is still possible to finish the game.


You mat want the player to think before acting, but inevitably someone will go the other way.
The problem is not what you do, but what players do.

This is a major problem not only to the adventure games but to the games in general. At least that's what i think.

I wish you good luck. 

[LRH]

OOH! I want to play this game when you're done!

On the issue of game design, it's something I've struggled with a *lot* when considering the dream-world. You want it to be surreal, but if it's too surreal, the player will have a very hard time figuring out what the intended puzzle is. I'd like to *think* I've gotten better at game design since working on my games, so here's a few things I've learned and will implement into the final installment of those games Cat was mentioning:

1.)Symbolism is just about everything in a dream, and it looks like you've already gotten that down. STILL, make sure it is *absolutely clear* to the player what they should be looking out for. Many game producers like to add symbolism to enhance the story or atmosphere, but few include symbolism into puzzles because of how cryptic it can be. A player isn't used to interacting with symbolism.

2.)Doing more with this concept may take some tinkering. Don't always rely on "use x on y" puzzles. That's a no-no and I've been guilty of doing this in too many of my games.

3.) Being creative is very hard, but you're on the right track. The best concepts come from what you know. I think a good puzzle comes from very good story telling. If you can, base the nightmares in the game on nightmares you've actually had, then try to build gameplay around it.

4.) Play some horror AGS games. You don't need to steal ideas, but there's so much to be learned. Yahtzee's games are of course very good, and there was another (I can't recall the name right now, someone please help me out?) that pulled off a *very* creepy, scary atmosphere about a young woman stuck in a house with a murderer.

Best of luck, please keep us posted!

[pmartin]

Zetsaika:

I understand your point, not everyone will play the way it's meant to be played, but there are certain things that makes the player want to play a certain way, like grabing him with a good story at the beginning of the game and making it harder to play trying every combination possible. Sierra's death scenes avoid this sometimes, don't they? But this brings the question: How to do it? Like in the mirror puzzle, should I put a death scene if the player tries to brake anything besides the mirror? Or should I make puzzles that only work in a certain order that the player would have to think about the 'meaning' of the puzzle to understand the order? What other ways to prevent this kind of situation without making the game frustrating with so many death scenes, or making illogical puzzles that the player can't understand without struggle.
(Am I being too ambitious?)

Domithan:

I'll be sure to tell you about it when it's ready.

And yes, symbolism is hard to work with sometimes, but I think I can use it a little more than I would in another game.
First because when in a dream setting people will know right away that symbolism will be present so they'll be more open to it won't they?
Second: The game is meant to be for 'adults' with some FMV frontal nudity (I SWEAR ) and adult themes explored in a way only Indie games can explore. So the crowd can handle a few things that they're not used to do. You know? The idea is to make a game that David Lynch fans will like, and symbolism is not something they're not used to.

[LRH]

Oh, sure! By no means is it impossible to work with symbolism, it's just tough, so be ready for that.