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What Makes a Good Puzzle? | Game Maker's Toolkit (Patreon)

Published:
2018-03-14 16:43:03
Imported:
2021-01

Content

Puzzles can be one of the most complex things in game design. In this video, I break down some great conundrums from favourite games, and share some knowledge from sharp puzzle designers, to find out what makes a good puzzle.

Also - I hit 400,000 subscribers!

Files

What Makes a Good Puzzle? | Game Maker's Toolkit

Puzzles can be one of the most complex things in game design. In this video, I break down some great conundrums from favourite games, and share some knowledge from sharp puzzle designers, to find out what makes a good puzzle. Support Game Maker's Toolkit on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/GameMakersToolkit Further Reading / Viewing Level Design Workshop: Solving Puzzle Design | GDC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xBJwrm9C8w A Good Puzzle Game Is Hard To Build | Rock, Paper, Shotun https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/22/how-to-make-a-puzzle-game/ Games shown in this episode (in order of appearance) Snakebird (Noumenon Games, 2015) Braid (Number None, 2008) Portal (Valve Corporation, 2007) Stephen's Sausage Roll (increpare games, 2016) Induction (Bryan Gale, 2016) Yono and the Celestial Elephants (Neckbolt, 2017) The Talos Principle (Croteam, 2014) Cosmic Express (Draknek, 2017) Deus Ex GO (Square Enix Montreal, 2016) Pipe Push Paradise (Corey Martin, 2018) Inside (Playdead, 2016) Lara Croft GO (Square Enix Montreal, 2015) The Swapper (Facepalm Games, 2013) Portal 2 (Valve Corporation, 2011) The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (The Odd Gentlemen, 2010) The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Nintendo, 2011) Hue (Fiddlesticks Games, 2016) The Turing Test (Bulkhead Interactive, 2016) Black the Fall (Sand Sailor Studio, 2017) Rise of the Tomb Raider (Crystal Dynamics, 2015) Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (Naughty Dog, 2016) Ittle Dew 2 (Ludosity AB, 2016) Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders (Artefacts Studio, 2016) Music used in this episode 00:00 - Take a stroll (Snakebird OST) 00:58 - Small world (Snakebird OST) 02:36 - Down below (Snakebird OST) 04:26 - Sokosnake (Snakebird OST) 07:59 - Up above (Snakebird OST) 11:02 - Snowman’s land (Snakebird OST) 14:47 - Space maze (Snakebird OST) 15:55 - Take a stroll (Snakebird OST) 17:09 - k. Part 2 - 01 untitled 1, animeistrash

Comments

Anonymous

Oh my god! I remember that puzzle in talos principle pissing me off so much, literally spent three hours trying to solve it!

Anonymous

congrats on the sub count!

Anonymous

Awesome episode! And a really great breakdown, one of your best episodes so far I think!

Anonymous

Great episode! Thanks, Mark :)

mcwizardry

Congrats on 400K subscribers, looking forward to checking out this episode!

Anonymous

Hi Mark English is not my first language. I hope I can get my point across. I´ m a big fan of puzzle games and I also thought about that subject alot. I´ m quit surprised that you didnt talk about The Witness because that game has great puzzle design. Good puzzles games have a set of rules which surprise you with new ideas. A puzzle doesnt have to be hard it only has to be interesting. You can make puzzles extremely hard by throwing in red herrings and alot of elements. But that doesnt make it good or interesting. Its about discovering new ideas. Also a good puzzle doesnt need any mechanical skill to solve. If your game has action elements then the player can sometimes think that his skill isnt enough and this then becomes a red herring. Good puzzles have no red herrings. A puzzle should also not be tedious to solve. There is nothing more frustrating then having solved a puzzle in your head and now you have to go through tedious work to put the solution into the game. The Talos Principal and Portal do this to an extent. Good puzzles also have all the information you need on a single screen or the information is at least your near reach. Remembering puzzle elements (maybe because its a big room) can also be interesting but most of the time inputing the solution can get tedious. (as in the point above) I would really love to hear your thoughts on The Witness. Like Stephens Sausage Roll its a pure puzzle game where the reward is more puzzles. It doesnt delude its gamedesign with additional addons. Its a puzzle game for people who like puzzles and not a vihicle for a story. I really liked that. It felt genuine.

Renmeleon

Fabulous video. Congratulations on hitting 400K, well deserved.

Mark M

Awesome video, I've been wanting to learn more about puzzles for a long time, so I was very excited when I saw that you'd made this! I loved the breakdown of the process. Particularly with the Portal example, I could see the designers thought process. The assumption is that you will have a block for each place it is needed. It tests your understanding of the portal gun's ability to manipulate light bridges and the physics of boxes. Finally, it tests your spatial awareness, showing that you don't need to be near an object to manipulate it if you have the portal gun. Awesome! The tricky thing for me is thinking up these ideas in the first place, and as you describe, a lot of testing and changes likely go in to make all of the gameplay elements line up. The creativity and genius to come up with the idea of portals, and all that comes with it, seems fully formed from the players perspective, but behind the scenes took a lot of work and revising.

Anonymous

Great video ! I like all the themes related to the game design and puzzle, i think making a puzzle is about understanding the system, better you understand, the system "reward" better puzzle for you. And the process of how to build/find the system and study it, it's what a game designer should do first when comes with puzzle game, this is what i learned from some great puzzle games.