Puzzle Makers Survival Kit, Scott Kim

 There are two crucial aspects of a puzzle:

1. It's fun.
2. It's solvable.

Motivation

• Distractions from the every day.
• A mental challenge.
• This reading shows that the motivations to play puzzles are the same as those to play games.

Puzzle Divisions and a Brief Explanation:

Action -

Puzzles with a mental challenge also combined with a twitch skill, for example Tetris.

Error recovery is present.

Easy to learn.

Story -

Use the puzzle tell an interesting story - about the line between story and puzzle link you make.

Keep the story relevant to the style and mechanics.

Certain genres are easily adaptable to Story Puzzles.

Competitive -

Players use the same puzzle area and all attempt to complete the puzzle as quickly as possible, beating the opponent.

Quickness, as these puzzles are usually turn-based.

Should be simple, and very quick - like Peggle.

Construction -

Lego is a perfect example of a Construction Puzzle.

Modularity (Give the player choices, e.g Lego can be made into anything in any combination).

Must not restrict the players creativity when making a construction puzzle.

Not too little, or too much structure.

Intensity Ramping -

Different Mechanics => Accelerating Puzzles => Based on Twitch.

Increasing Difficulty Through each Stage/Level => Based on Twitch.

Increasing difficulty, then a new mechanic (e.g. an upgrade, then being at the same level and work up to the next upgrade) => Difficulty Range does not Greatly Increase.

Semi-Linear Ordering => Offer the player complete choice in levels with no set order => Difficulty range does not Greatly Increase.

Ordered => One task must be completed to move onto the next.

Meta Puzzle => Small puzzles give clues as to how to solve the larger puzzles, gives the player a strong sense of progression.

How Should You Start?

Enjoying the manipulation of the puzzle (Core Mechanics).

Start familiarly - Introduce the player to the objects that can be manipulated, but do not alter the puzzle state.

Specifying Rules

Make it clear what can be done and what cannot be done in the game.

Building up Puzzles

The ordering of difficulty must make sense. Do not give the player an incredibly difficult puzzle at the beginning, because they will not be able to do it and the game will quickly become boring.

Simplifying

One example of simplifying - Making a puzzle that is about cars in a car park and you have to simplify the puzzle into its core component, getting the car and getting it out of the park.

Editor

Means you can quickly build and tweak puzzles, testing the components.

LEVEL DESIGN

Start with a bang!

Teach techniques

Paint a picture

Develop a theme

"What is a Puzzle?" Scott Kim in T.Fullerton (2008)

 This weeks readings were an extract from Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, T. Fullerton (2008). Specifically pages 35 to 39.

Scott Kim has worked at a games design company called Shufflebrain since 1990. His influence can be seen in some of the most popular puzzles of all time - Bejeweled, Colapse and Tetris.

Kim also contributes to the well known magazine: Discover; in which he comes up with three puzzles of increasing difficulty for the magazine's readers. The subject of Discover is maths and science - Kim claims to base the puzzles around these correct subject areas and not other topics irrelevant to the magazine.

So What is a Puzzle?

A toy of contrivance that can be solved by ingenuity or patient effort? A simple task presented with a bad interface?

According to Kim, Stan Isaacs offers the best definitions of a puzzle:

1. A puzzle is FUN
2. A puzzle has a RIGHT ANSWER

Puzzles are a form of play, which means they can be classed as a form of games or toys. One of Kim's puzzles included in the article was a visual letter puzzle - An image of a letter from the English alphabet folded once. The only clues available were that the letter is NOT "L". However it does not state whether the answer is upper or lower case - there could be many different solutions.

(One answer at the bottom of this post)

 Have a go yourself, and see how many letters (upper and lower case) you can find!

So, if it Fun?

 One of the most important aspects of designing a puzzle is knowing whether it is fun, or not. Here there are three different types of fun mentioned:

 

•  Novel - Invites you to be playful by rotating familiar objects and giving them a twist.
• Not too easy, not too hard - These puzzles are very selective, a puzzle that is much too hard can discourage people from participating in the game (if they are easily discouraged). Whereas if the puzzle is made too easy, then the player can quickly become bored and lose interest.
• Tricky - These puzzles are about shifting the perception of the players with an image.

This, however, leads us into the fact that many people have different preferences when it comes to puzzles and games - as well as different motivations for completing them.

Subjective nature: For some people, something as simple as doing the washing up can be loads of fun! And for others, not so much. It is very hard to find the 'middle-range' where the puzzle is aimed at as many people as possible, and still a fun/hard task.

The largest difference between a game and a puzzle is that games don't appear to have a single correct answer, but revolve around the player making decisions, however puzzles have specific answers.

From this article I have taken a clear understanding in the differences between games and puzzles, and also that the aspects involved in a puzzle can greatly affect the 'group' trying to complete it.






(ɟ) ǝlzznd ǝɥʇ oʇ ɹǝʍsuɐ ǝuo

What Every Games Developer Needs to Know About Story: John Sutherland

 This weeks reading was a Gamasutra article that describes the basics of story to games designers - What does a story consist of?

Throughout the entire article there is one statement that shines through and is drummed into the reader's head: Story IS Conflict. As the capabilities of technology are constantly advanced, the quality of games are also following suit. The 'bar' that people set games is ever rising and increasing the amount of interaction gamers want to recieve from games. A story is one of the features within a game that are being influenced by the designer, story and storytelling are human experiences and are part of our ancestry - Noah Falstein talks about this in my previous post 'Natural Funativity'.

This particular article stresses hugely that GAMES ARE NOT MOVIES!

Movies have had time to refine and experiment with what they do best, storytelling in the medium of picture and sound. However games have their own tools and features that seperate them from movies - player interaction! This conflict in these stories previously had to be planned from the very beginning, many classic stories use a very basic layout which if followed can make your story passible, but not great. The general structure goes as follows:

1. First, a protagonist is introduced - the hero.
2. His or her world is thrown out of order by an inciting incident.
3. A gap opens up between the hero and orginary life.
4. The hero tries the normal conservative action to overcome the gap - it fails.
5. The world pushes back too hard.
6. The hero then has to take a risk of some sort to overcome the obstacles that are pushing back.
7. Then there is a reversal - Something new happens, or the hero learns something she didn't know before, and the world if out of whack again! A second gap has opened up.
8. The hero has to take an even larger risk to overcome the second gap.
9. After overcoming the second gap, there is another reversal! Opening a third gap!
10. The hero has to take the greatest risk of all in order to overcome this third gap and reach taht object of desire, which is usually an ordinary life.

Characters and Characterisation

 Both of these are very important within a game - Character is not necessarily what the person looks like, but it is how the hero/villain acts towards situations and scenarios (Giving the character emotional depth). This character should be revolved around by the other characters involved in the storyline. This article suggests that the game world should always be antagonistic toward the character to increase the amount of struggle and hardship the player must endure.

Reversals

 Sutherland suggested the use of reversals are integral to creating conflict. Each act within the story are driven by reversals, these reversals can lead to three different types of conflict:

Internal Conflict (Typically novels) - Inside your head.
Interpersonal Conflict (Typically plays) - Between different people.
External Conflict (Typically movies/games) - Society in general/outside world.

Plays are 80% Audio 20% Visual
Movies are 80% Visual 20% Audio

Sutherland goes on to state that within games if you are able to make the player DO something that causes them to be exposed to the story - then that is the greatest priority, however SHOWING the player is second priority, and TELLING them is last.