Door puzzle ideas...

[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

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...

[Slasher]

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

[Mandle]

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.

[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.

[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]

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]

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]

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.

[Iron Lawnmower]

It's what I do best.

[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]

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.



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.

[monkey424]

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!

Indeed it is fun! You can read about my real-life room escape adventures in this earlier post:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=49119.msg636477079#msg636477079

[Chicky]

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.

Eric, go careful with that. Soon you'll be 11 years in and have re-designed and rebuilt your game 4 times. 

Besides, the puppet door has to be the most original approach to the locked door puzzle i've come across. Fantastically creative!

[Eric]

Ten ideas fresh off the idea wagon:

1. Door will only open when a drop of a rare blood type is submitted. You have no way to test, so you must convince reluctant NPCs to donate a finger prick.

2. A door with an intricate geometric pattern and a mathematical clue to figure out a specific point of intersection that needs to be pushed to unlock it. Pushing the wrong place shuffles the pattern and changes the clue.

3. A lock based in color mixing, but using theatrical gels and the physics of additive light instead of traditional pigment mixing (e.g. red + green = yellow).

4. A locked door with a transom through which can be seen a mirror reflecting the other side of the door. Manipulating the locks on your side of the door changes a pattern on the other, but the player must remember the matching pattern is reversed, due to the mirror.

5. A timed door lock for which you must die, appear as a specter to NPCs on the other side, and convince them to unlock the door and revive you before death is permanent (a meat locker might be useful here).

6. A "living" door that must be repaired surgically -- arteries cut and sutured -- before it is healthy enough to open.

7. A door that is actually the back of a giant. You must consult ancient tomes and compose a lullaby in the giant's mother tongue to lull it to sleep / move it away from the door.

8. A door that is flush with the wall such that only an outline shows. This door does not move, the rest of the room shifts around it.

9. A door on a television or film set that is legitimately not unlockable, but players must instead walk around the edge of the set that is visible in the foreground (ala Frank Drebbin on Police Squad).

10. A door with a colored object puzzle ironically guarded by a colorblind guard for whom you must collect technically wrongly colored, but easily confusable items (like a green Granny Smith apple to satisfy a slot for a red object).

[faerieevenstar]

What about a puzzle where the door isn't actually there and you have to create the door in order to open in? If that makes any sense at all... I'm imagining some sort of magical door, not a doorway exists without a door, and you have to build a door to put in a hole to open it, because that makes NO SENSE.

I suppose a bit like Penny Crayon, where anything she drew came to life, so you have to draw the door with a magic pen (ooh yes, wasn't there a puzzle in a Kings Quest game to enter the castle with magic paint to make a door?!?) Or like Wiley Coyote's painted tunnels!

Or you have to construct a door with many inventory items and say a spell or do a dance or something to make it become real.

Perhaps I'm thinking too obscure here!

[Eric]

I like it in a philosophical way -- you can't pass a barrier that doesn't exist, so to transcend them, you have to first create them.

[Mouth for war]

Maybe something with a scale...you must put the exact weight to get it open...I dunno

[Eric]

A meta-physical scale that weighs your soul, and you have to do good deeds until your soul is light enough to pass.

[Stupot]

I suppose a bit like Penny Crayon, where anything she drew came to life, so you have to draw the door with a magic pen.

There's that chalk door scene in Beetlejuice. :-)

[CaptainD]

A meta-physical scale that weighs your soul, and you have to do good deeds until your soul is light enough to pass.

There MUST be an Egyptian theme to the area this door is in.   Another door in this area could have you solving the Sphinx's riddle to get through (cliché I know, but...)

[Stupot]

Maybe you're in a room with a sarcophagus and you have to climb in it and shut the lid to trigger some spiritual acid trip in which you must solve a psychadelic hieroglyphics-based code presented to you by some long-dead pharaoh. And then you wake up in the box and have to find a switch in the dark to let you out, then you can go to the door and enter the correct glyphs on some panel.

[Ben X]

Another door in this area could have you solving the Sphinx's riddle to get through (cliché I know, but...)

Except the Sphinx insists that it's NOT Man, and you have to use an encyclopedia to look up a rare lizard that actually changes its number of legs throughout the day.