"Hush Puppies" puzzle - a discussion of puzzles

[TerranRich]

LOL, you're probably right. However, the KQ remakes by AGDInteractive kinda changed a few of those tough parts, didn't they? I only played the remakes, not the originals.

[Anym]

The first one was a very faithful remake of the first King's Quest game, complete with puzzle design from 1987, and rather painful because of this. The second one took more liberties with plot and puzzles and ended up being vastly superior to the original, although also less true to it.

My sentiments regarding unfair puzzles are along the lines of GarageGothic's and VinceTwelve's. Loom, one of my all-time favorites is almost puzzle-free and there is a lot of puzzle-free interactive fiction (modern text adventures). That part of the question seems to be similar to the question of puzzle motivation.

Regarding the question where hard becomes unfair, I think that's almost impossible for the designer to decide without proper beta testing, because no matter what you do, the player will get it wrong. Illogical or obscure puzzles that stump even your best beta testers aren't hard to design and nothing to be proud of.

[Radiant]

You know, I just finished KQ5 again the other day, and I never realized how god-awful the puzzles in that game were.

Hear hear!

Weren't all KQ games exercises in masochism?  I can't think of one where you didn't die constantly.

Not really. 6 is very good, 4 doesn't kill you in unexpected ways (but has a few dead ends) and the first has all sorts of tricks you can use to avoid being killed (the ring, the faerie, etc).

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I decided to revive this thread instead of creating a new one because what I want to say really falls under the discussion in this thread, although on a different direction.

Since we're discussing puzzles, I'd like to ask the average AGSer about how puzzle difficulty should be balanced in a game.

My favourite puzzle-structure is - easy(ish) around the beginning, medium/hard in the middle, easy(ish) in the end. Why? Because I don't want to be daunted by a puzzle in the very beginning of the game - no, I want to progress enough to get hooked (exception made for such games as Shivers and Magsic and whatnot). When I'm hooked, in the middle of the game, THEN I can really get to work on those puzzles, if the game was compelling and has drawn me into the story. But by the time I get to the end, what I DON'T want to do is waste a lot of time in a real hard puzzle.

Most games actually seem to fit the hardest puzzles in the end of the game. I don't know about the rest of you, but that makes ME go and grab a walkthrough right away - at that point I don't give a damn about the puzzles, I'm so psyched up I just want to follow the story. I don't want to be so close to the ending and suddenly have to solve a puzzle like the prime numbers in Other Worlds, or an outlandish puzzle like in 9:The Last Resort, or face a different sort of game structure like in Al Emmo (the game practically walked us through most of it and left us without a net in the end. You make the player used to having it easy, you DON'T make it suddenly hard on him - instead you should balance stuff better).

Of course, I don't mean I want the ending to be almost non-interactive or bleeding obvious. Just not fiendishly hard. It's hard enough to have to endure the pressure that comes with the ending of most games, which usually takes place in a dangerous location or imposes some other sort of stress on you or the story or whatever. My favourite ending sequences are probably the Gabriel Knight ones (1 and 2), Phantasmagoria 1 and Black Dahlia - make of that what you will.

But this is my opinion, and I'd really like to hear the opinions of the AGS community. This is one of those things - understanding what the gamers like and how they feel about this *must* lead to better games.

[ManicMatt]

I'm the same way! Reactor 9 is a good recent example of the puzzle at the end (Providing you were trusted enough to see this) when..

Spoiler

Matt has to take down the bad guy.

[close]

It was pretty easy, but made you feel smart for doing it. I like end puzzles like that. (Also like in Secret of Monkey Island)

Indeed, my own game had a bloody easy end puzzle! (How many of you inserted the blood disc into the slot? hehe.)

[blueskirt]

Personally I like them easy until the story kicks in, then for the rest of the game it should be medium puzzles sprinkled with tough puzzles here and there.

It's important for them to be easy on the begining to first hook your players on your game to make sure they'll keep playing until the very end. When I played Pleurghburg: Dark Ages, I remember spending something like 4 hours just to unlock the door at the morgue. And it's only after unlocking it that the awesome story kicked in. I was lucky, P:DA was the fourth AGS game I played, back when I thought it would be a good idea to play thru every AGS games released. Because if I had played it nowaday, I think I wouldn't have had the patience I had 4 years ago, to play 4 hours on a single puzzle when I wasn't hooked on the game yet, and I would have missed one heck of a gem in the AGS community.

And I don't think the puzzles' difficulty should lower at the end, I've just been deceived by too many cheesy ending puzzles where everything simply flow too quickly compared to rest of the game. I think MI2 got it well. While keeping a degree of tension and danger, you could roam freely in the area and collect objects, you could still solve puzzles in whatever order you wanted, just like you could in the middle of the game, there had a puzzle or two that kept you thinking for a long time, but they were not deviously obscure or illogic, just left you smiling with a "Why I didn't thought about this before" relief when you solved them.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

It's funny, the final sequence of MI2 came to my mind as I wrote my post. I also agree that it was a good one, mostly because you knew exactly what you were supposed to be doing, even though HOW to do it became rather obscure at times. That makes it a lot more manageable and enjoyable.