What are good puzzles?

Started by Mr_Threepwood, Mon 28/08/2006 23:28:45

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Mr_Threepwood

I'm making a game but I'm having a hard time thinking of great puzzles to put into it, I've played all the lucasarts ones but can't think of anything that really stands out that I can incorporate.

Can anyone think of an interesting adventure game puzzle, preferably one that doesn't take much drawing but takes some programming skill.  I was thinking of putting a shooting sequence or pong or something it but it wouldn't make sense with the rest of my game.
I am a mighty pirate

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires

Big question. IMO, the best puzzles are logical, though not immediately apparent - they can lead the player to a certain point, if they wish, but they never straight out give the solution. If it can be solved some other way, it should. It should have a bearing on the game's story and situation, never feel out of context (unless the game is a puzzle-fest, or an inventory-puzzle-based game). The player should not have to be able to read the programmer's mind to solve it - and this also goes for how the puzzle is implemented. A graphical version of "guess the verb" is a horrible thing.

Now, I haven't got a lot of experience, but what advice I can give is: think about the story, and think about the obstacles the player can face. It's part of fleshing out the game, after all. Once you establish the obstacles, you can figure out how to get the player past them. And you can even make it incorporate the storyline.

An example - your player character is a robot-ish creature. It's due to work in half an hour. So far so good. But if you make something happen to him, like delay him, it's a puzzle. Imagine he couldn't leave. Why? Maybe he got stuck. Maybe he... hey, what if he went berserk, or something, and hit something and made a short-circuit and melted his hand? Now he has to take his hand off somehow. Ta-da, instant puzzle.

And think of THIS: why can't he just cut it off and go to work? Would it hurt him? Would other robots be suspicious? Why can't they suspect anything? And why did he do that in the first place? Relevant to the story, ya see.

There are many ways of creating puzzles. My way is, set up the outline of the story and let situations come up. It almost shapes itself, you'll find.
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Mr_Threepwood

Thanks for the feedback, and as a result I think I've thought of another small puzzle that is good because it makes you use another thing that you get more than once (don't want to give it away since it's far cooler than an item).

I was specificly thinking of trying to put something in my game more like a minigame or something but am having a hard time trying to think of one more (already have one) that would make sense in the games atmosphere (dark style game).

Maybe I'll look around on flash sites and stuff for minigames that are fun and see if I can adapt a thing like that into my game, I'm confident in my programming abilities so if it's possible to do under AGS I probably can.

I'm having some story problems figuring out how to make the game still make sense from the begging to the end.  The problem was I started the current game I'm doing with no AGS knowledge and as a result that has impacted the story from something relatively simple into the complex thing I have now.  As I learned how to use AGS better and thought of cool effects to do it's in a way forced me to change the story so that it can make some sense.
I am a mighty pirate

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