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Originally posted in eZine issue
Today, I’d like to talk about puzzles. Puzzles are essential in a game, because you don’t want a game in which you just have to beat monsters. Puzzles are there to challenge the player even further. You can have mazes, push the blocks, interaction with the environment, riddles, and many more. Today, I will select a few of them, tell a bit about them, and explain how to use them effectively. The most common, and easy to make puzzle is of course the maze. The objective of a maze is confusing the player, and making him try to find the exit. The most basic variant of this is having a bunch of random corridors and dead ends. You must be careful with dead ends, however. This makes the player backtrack a lot, and it will eventually cause the player quitting your game out of frustration. The dead ends should either have a large treasure (not too much, of course) or you should leave them out. The way you should fool people, is to make them walk in circles. A way to strengthen this effect, is by predicting which path the player will take, and make that go down that way, only to find that he’s seen that part before. Another way is to spread the maze over several rooms. Again, try not to overdo this, because otherwise the player will become bored again, and quit.
Then we come to another kind of puzzle: push the blocks. This can be from as simple as pushing one out of the way to create a passage way elsewhere, to finding your way through a few dozen of those things. The first variant, of course, has the advantage that when the block has been cleared, that you’ve created a neat shortcut, in case you need to retrace your steps. The second variant gives a good challenge, if used well. Just be careful that you’ve always got a backup plan, for in case our character gets walled in, and can’t move any more. Then there are also puzzles that interact with the environment. A good example for this is from the game Golden Sun. Those who played it, remember that there once was a forest, in which you could control the flood gate of a lake. When the lake was dry, one would push logs into the right direction, and when the lake was full, one could hop over these logs, right to the other side. This could be done in tons of other ways: creating a landslide, freezing certain places, make some vines grow. You name it. This requires a lot of event scripting though.
We also have Riddles. These can be common logic problems, that need to be solved to advance. You can also have some mathematic problem to keep the player busy. You can also be a bit creative, and make the player find out an important plot part. Once the player has solved these riddles, he has to do something with the answers. The most obvious choice, is of course, a multiple choice question, consisting of more than one answer. This is of course very boring, and the player can of course try out all the options. So you need to do something else with the results of the riddle: they can point a player into the right direction for, for example. They can help the player choose one out of a large number of choices. They can hint the player to a good weapon. Be creative. These, of course, weren’t all of the types of puzzles around. We also have the mini-games, the interactive puzzles, the ice-slice puzzles, the push-the-switch-puzzles, and many, many more. The one thing you must remember is: be creative. Make the player know what’s going on, but try to surprise him. And don’t make the puzzles too impossible, otherwise the player will just get frustrated and quit the game.
By psgels
Tags:
Posted under: Game Dev
Read this blog post »
Originally posted in eZine issue
Today, I’d like to talk about puzzles. Puzzles are essential in a game, because you don’t want a game in which you just have to beat monsters. Puzzles are there to challenge the player even further. You can have mazes, push the blocks, interaction with the environment, riddles, and many more. Today, I will select a few of them, tell a bit about them, and explain how to use them effectively. The most common, and easy to make puzzle is of course the maze. The objective of a maze is confusing the player, and making him try to find the exit. The most basic variant of this is having a bunch of random corridors and dead ends. You must be careful with dead ends, however. This makes the player backtrack a lot, and it will eventually cause the player quitting your game out of frustration. The dead ends should either have a large treasure (not too much, of course) or you should leave them out. The way you should fool people, is to make them walk in circles. A way to strengthen this effect, is by predicting which path the player will take, and make that go down that way, only to find that he’s seen that part before. Another way is to spread the maze over several rooms. Again, try not to overdo this, because otherwise the player will become bored again, and quit.
Then we come to another kind of puzzle: push the blocks. This can be from as simple as pushing one out of the way to create a passage way elsewhere, to finding your way through a few dozen of those things. The first variant, of course, has the advantage that when the block has been cleared, that you’ve created a neat shortcut, in case you need to retrace your steps. The second variant gives a good challenge, if used well. Just be careful that you’ve always got a backup plan, for in case our character gets walled in, and can’t move any more. Then there are also puzzles that interact with the environment. A good example for this is from the game Golden Sun. Those who played it, remember that there once was a forest, in which you could control the flood gate of a lake. When the lake was dry, one would push logs into the right direction, and when the lake was full, one could hop over these logs, right to the other side. This could be done in tons of other ways: creating a landslide, freezing certain places, make some vines grow. You name it. This requires a lot of event scripting though.
We also have Riddles. These can be common logic problems, that need to be solved to advance. You can also have some mathematic problem to keep the player busy. You can also be a bit creative, and make the player find out an important plot part. Once the player has solved these riddles, he has to do something with the answers. The most obvious choice, is of course, a multiple choice question, consisting of more than one answer. This is of course very boring, and the player can of course try out all the options. So you need to do something else with the results of the riddle: they can point a player into the right direction for, for example. They can help the player choose one out of a large number of choices. They can hint the player to a good weapon. Be creative. These, of course, weren’t all of the types of puzzles around. We also have the mini-games, the interactive puzzles, the ice-slice puzzles, the push-the-switch-puzzles, and many, many more. The one thing you must remember is: be creative. Make the player know what’s going on, but try to surprise him. And don’t make the puzzles too impossible, otherwise the player will just get frustrated and quit the game.
By psgels
Tags:
Posted under: Game Dev
Read this blog post »