Game Design: A Brainstorming Toolbox

Game Design: A Brainstorming Toolbox

Hello, mortals.

New reading, "Game Design: A Brainstorming Toolbox" written by Dave Perry and Ruses DeMaria.

"What is a puzzle?" According to the authors, it is "a baffling problem that is said to have a correct solution."

There is a problem and it has a solution.

I don't personally feel that is a terribly good definition of a puzzle, it doesn't incorporate the intention for puzzles to be fun.

Next, the authors mention that, while puzzles are challenges, not all challenges are puzzles; the distinction should be made between the two.

It can be said that puzzles are situational challenges (still ignoring the purpose of puzzles here); they can appear in more or less any game genre, and can range from putting pieces together to finding missing objects, to making difficult decisions, to making the right choices when faced with a particular scenario or set of clues.

There are also puzzles which involve moving objects; movable objects can be utilised by the player as a jumping platform, a barrier, a route-blocker, as part of a configuration puzzle, as a trigger or weight, to fill a hole or raise the level of a body of water, as a floating platform, or as a material for another problem.

There are a huge number of ways something like a movable object can be used for, and a huge number of game objects and mechanics other than movable objects.

Another example can be a key; a key doesn't necessarily need to be an actual key or keycard. It could be a weapon, or part of a corpse (such as a severed head or hand), a piece of fruit, some jewellery, a tattoo, and so on. Literally anything could be a key in modern video games.

While we're exploring potential game puzzle mechanics and objects, let's mention configuration puzzles, sequences of tasks, follow-the-leader puzzles, obscure objects of desire, barriers, chaos management, moral dilemmas (seriously, I want more of those in my games!), riddles, signs and wonders, devices, mental puzzles... you get the picture.

There are so many available puzzle mechanics at the hands of digital game designers, they can more or less make any puzzle they can think of. This goes to the point where there are entire games based around nothing but puzzles, such as Tetris. These often employ slightly different mechanics, including:

• Matching colours and shapes
• Alignment
• Constructing an image
• Moving/Rotating pieces
• Memorising
• Spotting differences
• Time pressure
• Calculations
• Strategy

Both digital and non-digital games can also include codes and cryptography, in the form of transposed letters in text, letters shifted according to a certain formula, text that can only be read with a mechanical device, colour codes, and so on. It's also perfectly possibly for the designers to create an entirely new language.

Ok, that's this one done. There were a LOT of examples in this one, things which any of the readers can take and go and use when creating a game. I didn't know there was such an extensive list of possible uses of movable objects in games. This reading gave me a lot of ideas for making puzzles and making them more interesting, which I can hopefully apply at some point in the future.

Praise the Emperor, mortals.