The Puzzlemaker's Survival Kit

The Puzzlemaker's Survival Kit

"...I feel like I'm forgetting something. What do I usually do? Well, there's the reading every week or so, and... Oh."

Yo, mortals...

*sigh* Ok, let's get this straight; my productivity has been at an all-time low this past month. I've been doing the reading each week and not much else.

Let's... let's just get this done and out of the way.

So, first thing I've been reading is The Puzzlemaker's Survival Kit. This was a presentation given by Scott Kim, which I had access to the PowerPoint for. This was mainly about how puzzles are used in games, and how they could be used.

To start with, Kim comments on how puzzles are parts of many games, by themselves, within larger games, on the Internet and phones, and in education games. Therefore, when designing a game, it is likely that knowing how to make a good puzzle will be extremely useful.

There are some key concepts that are common to all puzzles; Kim draws his definition of a puzzle from these concepts: "A puzzle is a problem that is fun to solve and has a right answer."

Next, Kim states that it's important to be able to differentiate between puzzles and other forms of play. To explain this, he presents us with the Play Pyramid, which contains the common forms of play and orders them.

Game: This covers multiplayer games such as Chess, where the goal is to beat other players.
Puzzle: Single player games in which the goal is to find the right answer.
Toy: Toys have no goals, but allow the player to freely explore the toy and set their own goals.
Experience: This can be any non-interactive play from screensavers to books to movies.

My notes are a little bit all over the place with this reading, as they can be with a PowerPoint presentation, and next cover the motivation to solve the puzzle; this can be for the challenge, as a distraction from life, for the character and setting that the puzzle is inside, or for some deeper meaning.

There are many different kinds of puzzles (again, all over the place). Most fall into one or more of the following categories: Word puzzles, such as crosswords, Image puzzles, such as jigsaws, and Logic puzzles such as a Rubik's Cube.

Combinations include Rebus (Word/Image), Sliding Block (Image/Logic), and Hangman (Logic/Word).

Some other elements that commonly appear in games include chance, knowledge, dexterity, and prizes.

There are five genres commonly associated with puzzles:

Pure puzzle - a pure puzzle includes Solitaire, Minesweeper, Crosswords, and so on; they don't include elements from the other categories. The key issue with pure puzzles is larger form, or how to build them into a coherent larger product. There are several ways to do this, including a linear map of puzzles, increasing the speed of the puzzle in each suuccessive stage, like with Tetris, or a sawtooth arrangement, where the difficulty will increase slightly, and then drop again when a new element in introduced (Plants vs Zombies did this particularly well). It is preferable with these arrangements when the player needn't complete one puzzle to move onto the next, or if they have other puzzles to try if they get stuck on one.

Action puzzle - often under time pressure, such as Tetris. Error recovery is often necessary in such puzzles. These can also include rhythm, and are usually easy to learn, and involve a random element.

Story puzzle - combine puzzles with a story; some examples are Myst, Metal Gear Solid, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The key issue with story puzzles is the role of the puzzle in the storyline. There is also how the puzzle affects the storyline to consider; this can be done through  a branching narrative, a linear narrative, a semi-linear narrative, or an enhanced narrative where the puzzles are optional but provide more depth.

Competitive puzzle - these include multiple players working against each other; Tirivial Pursuit is a good example. Chess doesn't qualify, according to Kim, as that is more about strategy than puzzle-solving. The key issue is scoring and decideing which player wins. This can be quantitive, as with Jeopardy, progressive, as with most board games, or some other way.

Construction puzzle - construction puzzles combine puzzle solving with the fun of building things; these are highly popular in education games as they force people to think and come up with mutliple potential solutions, and then experiment with the one they think is most likely to work. My favourite example of a construction puzzle is World of Goo. The key issue here is modularity; the designer has to decide how much structure they want the construction side of things to have. Too little structure, and the player is forced to rely on their own imagination, and will eventually give up. Too much structure, and they can't apply their imagination at all, only able to build a few very specific constructions.

Next, Kim gives us three lessons to improve puzzle design:

1: Indulge one style - As demonstrated, there are many styles of puzzle, but a designer should focus on one in order to satisfy the player's appetite for it. These are economical to produce, and can be released on a regular basis to keep the player coming back for more.

2: Generate puzzles - using computer algorithms to create fresh puzzles isn't necessarily easy, but once it's been perfected (which some companies have done), there are almost an unlimited number of levels that can be produced with ease.

3: Easy to learn - To help the player learn the puzzle quickly, it should be familiar at first glance, the control method should be simple to work out in their heads, there should be some element of self-demonstration, and the player should be able to discover more about the puzzles as they go along, to keep them moving forward.

Well, I just looked ahead in my notes, and this is going to be a LONG post... Let's get this over with so I can move onto the next one.

According to Kim, there are eight steps to achieving a finished game:

• Inspiration - this can come from other games, digital or otherwise, or simply from a particular subject matter. It's important to be prepared to change the idea to optimise it for the chosen medium. It's also possible to retrofit a story and gameplay based upon art.
• Simplify - identify the essential core skill or mechanic, eliminate any irrelevant details, make all of the pieces uniform, and simplify the controls.
• Editor - next create a prototype with no art or other details; this lets programmers create some reusable code, allows game designers to tweak rules, and the level designers (and even players) to create levels.
• Spec - it's now time to decide upon the essential elements of the board, pieces, moves, and goal, as well as to create some design goals (about the audience or platform), art assets, sound assets, writing, programming, and back-end programming issues.
• Level Design - you may want the levels in your game to start with a bang, teach techniques to the player, paint a picture, and/or develop a theme.
• Hinting - games should offer a variety of challenges of increasing difficulty, to continue challenging the player as they improve; there exists an area between ability and challenge, and keeping the player in this area is called flow. It's important that games try their best to keep players in this state where they won't get bored or frustrated. Some tools for keeping them there include giving hints and letting them change the difficulty.
• Testing - play-test the game with different people over and over to find out if the rules are clear, how hard the game is, are there any unforeseen solutions, and is the game fun?
• Presentation - finally, check that the art, sound, story, and UI aren't just attractive, but also tell the user how to play the game.

Ok, I believe that's it. That was a long, hard block of text, but I applaud you for getting through it.

*clap clap clap*

PowerPoints are easy enough to read on their own and make notes on, but then formulating those notes into a solid block of writing like one of these posts is more difficult. From what I've seen, I'm not all the great at this. Slides tend to jump around a lot with little connection between them, which is fine, notes can do the same, but then you need to link everything in a single piece.

The actual content of this reading was pretty good, plenty of information was given; I like the way Kim differentiates between different forms of play and how he's split different types of puzzle up into categories. I hope that I've relayed this and everything else in an understandable manner.

Right, straight onto the next one; the deadline for the blogs is tomorrow, and I have a lot to do.

Praise the Emperor, mortals.