"What is a Puzzle?"

"What is a Puzzle?"

*grumbles quietly*

[Before I start this, I kinda want to explain something quickly; when I call you mortals or tell you to praise the Emperor, I'm not trying to force any kind of religious doctrine or belief on you (I personally hate people who force their views upon others), I'm just semi-role-playing a Warhammer 40k theme, based around the Holy Imperium of Mankind and their God Emperor. It's just to give this blog some flavour, something a little different from everyone else's. I don't by any means intend to offend anyone or attack their personal beliefs.]

Hey, mortals, if you read the last post like good little servants to His Will, you'd know all about me being behind on blogs, upcoming deadline, yada yada, let's get onto some content!

Scott Kim asks us "what is a puzzle?" in T. Fullerton's "Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games", 2008.

And then he answers his own question.

The Roundhouse Dictionary defines a puzzle as "a toy or other contrivance designed to amuse by representing difficulties to be solved by ingenuity or patient effort."

From this, Kim gets two factors common to all puzzles, which he uses to create his definition of a puzzle:

1. A puzzle is fun.
2. A puzzle has a right answer.

So, to decide whether or not something is a puzzle, we ask "is it fun?" first.

There are different ways to decide if something is fun; for example, is it novel? Does it take something familiar and give it a twist?

Or perhaps it's simply not too easy and not too hard; or perhaps, it doesn't appear to be easy, and presents the player with something that looks harder than it is to keep things interesting.

Maybe the puzzle is tricky; using elements such as perceptual shifts can make a puzzle very interesting indeed. Perceptual shifts occur in many hypothetical or two-dimensional puzzles, forcing the solver to think in a different way to find the solution.

Remember, however, that in all of these, fun is in the eye of the beholder.

So, once we've established that the something is fun, next we must find out if it has a right answer. With puzzles, there is the potential for multiple solutions; keeping it to one solution restricts the puzzle, but also gives the designer the ability to define it as THE right answer, and create new elements based on this (such as a "PERFECT" rating).

How can we define a puzzle from a game, you may be wondering. Well, Kim tells us that games are rule-based systems in which the goal is for one or more players to win. Puzzles are also rule-based systems where the goal is to fins a solution. This makes them similar in many cases, but remember that they aren't; puzzles have little to no replayability (unlike games), and games are larger structures which often include puzzles, whereas a puzzle is more often than not a single, stand-alone piece.

Toys, on the other hand, are manipulable, but have no fixed goals like puzzles and games do. Stories involve fantasy play, but cannot be changed or manipulated by the viewer, like toys, puzzles, and games all can.

Finally, Kim gives us a quick rundown of puzzle design. Designing puzzles involves two major aspects: rule design, in which the overall rules, goal, and format of a puzzle are conceived, and level design, where all of these are put into place with a suitable challenge for the player.

Puzzle design, Kim says, has the same goal as game design: to keep the player in a pleasurably challenging state of flow (mentioned in the previous post). Good puzzle design should include an attractive goal, seamlessly teaching rules, giving feedback to the player, and rewarding the player appropriately.

This was a nice, short bit of reading; easy to get one's head around and make progress with, I thought. Overall, the message Kim tries to give is clear and makes sense, and I feel I have a better understanding of puzzlemaking having read some of his pieces.

Anyway, I'll leave it here, mortals. Praise the Emperor!