Games and puzzles are often synonymous because puzzles are, in fact, games. They have rules, goals, and often special rewards. However, puzzles are also among the building blocks of good game design, and as such, they are worth exploring in various ways. This chapter contains various discussions of puzzles in games with the following sections:
A puzzle is, according to one definition, “a baffling problem that is said to have a correct solution.” The key is that it is a problem and that there is a solution. Puzzles can be solved by deduction, by induction, or even by random chance. The solution exists and can be found if the necessary action is completed. Some puzzles can be solved by more than one method. For instance, a Rubik’s Cube may have only one solution, but it can be arrived at by different sequences of movements.
It is useful to distinguish puzzles from challenges. Although puzzles represent challenges, some challenges are not puzzles. Some challenges, such as having to fight an enemy who blocks your way, are not really puzzles...unless the enemy has some secret that you must uncover in order to beat him. For instance, the mythological Medusa would turn you to stone, but Perseus used a mirror to turn the tables on her. That was a puzzle... The challenge of finding something to eat when you’re hungry is not really a puzzle. You just have to find food and eat it. But the challenge of figuring out which plants are edible and which are poisonous could be a puzzle.
Some puzzles are pretty straightforward. They have obvious and definite solutions, and from the player’s point of view, the solution is all good. But some puzzles involve more complex decision-making, where not all the consequences of solving the puzzle are desirable. I’ve included a separate discussion of dilemmas in the “Dilemmas” section in Chapter 9, “Storytelling Techniques.” The “Dilemmas” section could have been included in this chapter, but I thought it somewhat more relevant in the chapter on stories because it often involves interesting and challenging plot points, which are, at the same time, puzzles.
Puzzles are among the building blocks used to create games. Although the most obvious use of puzzles occurs in puzzle games (of course), adventure games, and Role-Playing Games, in a broad sense puzzles can be thought of as situational challenges. As such, puzzles may occur in many genres of games. For instance, a mission in a First-Person Shooter may involve completing specific steps or destroying a particular installation. To do so, you might have to get past a guard tower or other obstacle, and the way this situation is set up could be thought of as a puzzle.
One type of puzzle is finding pieces to something and putting them together. This could be a device—a bomb, an airplane, a shrink ray, a magical suit of armor, for example—or it could be a potion that involves many ingredients, or a map torn in pieces and scattered. The end result could be useful in itself, or it could be a token that must be delivered to an NPC in order to complete some task.
Another puzzle could involve finding a missing person/creature/thing.
Persons
They have wandered off and must be located.
They have been kidnapped or otherwise captured by the bad folks.
They are on a quest or task of their own, and you must find them to deliver a message or item or to join forces with them.
Creatures can be key figures in a story, often because they hold the key to a mystery or are really more than they seem. Sometimes, however, creatures are simply beloved pets that have been lost. In this scenario, they are usually part of a minor quest, whereas when they are key elements, they are part of a larger quest or story. They can appear to be the latter while really being the former.
The creature has wandered off and must be located.
The creature has been stolen or otherwise captured by the bad folks.
The creature is actually a sentient being on a quest or task of its own, and you must find it to deliver a message or item or to join forces with it.
Things are often the object of a quest or puzzle. Sometimes they are part of a side quest or a less important story element. Other times, they are crucial to the successful completion of the game.
The object is in pieces and must be reassembled. (Refer to the “Putting Pieces Together” section earlier in this chapter.)
The object is in the hands of the bad guys and must be recovered.
The object is nothing more than a rumor or a myth, but somehow you must find it.
The object is in plain sight, but you can’t seem to obtain/move/activate it.
The object is an ordinary item that nobody knows is really the important item. You must discover the truth about it.
Puzzles often involve making choices among several options without knowing what the result will be. (That’s what saved games are for, right?) Anyway, there are lots of types of choices:
Eating the Blue Pill or the Red Pill. As it was with Alice, sometimes you have to take a risk to accomplish a task. In Alice’s case, the risk involved eating something whose effect was unknown. This sort of choice involves physical (or possibly mental) risk and could come in the form of a choice of magic spells to cast, machines to fire up, or teleport pads to step onto.
What’s Behind Door #3? Also known as “The Lady and the Tiger,” this sort of choice involves different paths. It could involve a set of doors to try or different roads, ladders, elevators, warp points, and so on. One or more choices might open to doom—or at least something unpleasant. At least one choice should be preferable; however, the preferable path may not be the safest. For instance, the safest or easiest path might lead to a location you need to reach, but the most dangerous path might provide you the opportunity to obtain a great item that you would miss if you made the other choice. In games, the path of least resistance is not always the best path.
Note
The Lady and the Tiger is from an old fable, the short version of which is that a young man falls in love with a princess, but he is taken prisoner by the king and given this choice: Open one of two doors. Behind one is the princess. Open that door, and you will be married to her and become the heir to the throne. Behind the other door is a vicious tiger. Open that door, and you will be eaten. Of course, this kind of choice is too simplistic for a game, because both doors lead, essentially, to completed outcomes—unless, that is, marrying the princess is just the beginning of the adventure, in which case it’s still not all that great for a game because the player has no clues. Without clues it’s a matter of blind luck, and it’s always better to let players feel as if they have made a choice based on skill or knowledge. Pure luck certainly plays a part in many games, but a Lady and the Tiger–type puzzle would be better if the player could somehow figure out which door hid the princess or perhaps could find a way to overcome the tiger, thus proving his worth and gaining the princess anyway. In any case, I like the story, so I mention it here.
Freeing the Prisoners. In its purest form, this hard choice involves choosing among imprisoned characters, at least one of which may be evil. The classic example of this was in the original Myst, when you had to figure out which of two imprisoned brothers was the mad one and which was the “good” one.
Who Do You Save? As in Freeing the Prisoners, you must choose who you will help. The situation requires that you make a choice. You can’t help everyone, and your choice will have repercussions within the game, immediately or at a future time. In this case, you may be saving people from a fire, from an advancing army, from an impending avalanche, or from a death sentence.
Sacrifice. This involves giving up something: an item of value, money, or perhaps a power or ability to accomplish a worthy goal. It might even involve sacrificing your life or that of someone you care about.
This type of puzzle involves finding and killing a specific monster to complete a quest or to trigger an event. This is pretty standard fare for most games, but it can be made more interesting by putting some twists on it:
The target of the kill task is invulnerable. The puzzle is to find its Achilles heel.
The target is your friend.
The target is really on the good side.
The target can offer you something that can help you achieve your overall quest.
The target is somehow tied into you or someone you care about in such a way that killing the target also kills that person or causes him or her to turn against you.
The target is the sole support for a poor village (or something like that).
The target has reformed and wishes to be able to do good in the world to make up for his former misdeeds.
You need the target alive for some other task.
This type of puzzle deals with figuring out what to say/offer/give to an NPC. This kind of puzzle often involves clues given by the NPC or by another NPC. Clues may also be found in the environment or in documents, such as books or letters located somewhere in the world. In essence, the puzzle involves several stages. If the NPC wants an item, there are three essential stages:
Determine what the NPC wants.
Obtain the item in question.
Give the item to the NPC.
If the puzzle involves saying something specific to the NPC, there are two or three stages:
Figure out what you need to say to the NPC to further the story.
If necessary, take certain actions to unlock the trigger for that statement (such as talking to another NPC or witnessing some event—or obtaining an item, as above).
Talk to the NPC and say the appropriate phrase or pass along the significant information.
Often in a game, if you come across an object that you can pick up or something you can drag or push around, there’s a puzzle associated with it. For instance, moveable objects can be used in a variety of ways:
As a way to gain height, for instance to climb or jump over a wall or to reach a high location
As a moveable barrier, for instance to block incoming enemies or as protection from attack
As a way to open up an otherwise closed route
As a part of a configuration puzzle—an element in a larger scheme, pattern, or device
As a way to trigger a device, such as a pressure plate
As a weight to use to balance something or to drop from a height on someone or something
As a way to fill a hole or to raise the level of a body of water
As a floating platform to cross water, lava, or other liquid
As raw material for some other use—such as carving a statue out of a huge rock, leaving a message carved in stone, or breaking off parts of the mass for various uses
Objects you can carry with you may also have special uses in solving puzzles. For instance, if an object has no perceivable use, it may be part of a puzzle or other challenge. Unknown objects are used:
As keys
As magical ingredients
As items that can be collected (often to complete quests)
As parts of something that can be constructed or repaired
As objects that can be combined with other objects to produce a variety of results
As weapons (or ammunition) whose existence or use is yet unknown
As lost objects of quests, which can be returned to their owners for rewards
As charms or protections from harm, even if their use is not understood
Sometimes a puzzle involves changing the environment in some way. This can involve moving items to new locations (see also the upcoming “Configurations” section) or possibly destroying some items or changing their state. For instance, you might have to stack some boxes in a certain way to gain access to a high place. Or, you may have to rotate a set of objects with different-colored faces so that they form a specific color pattern. Or you might have to destroy some items in an area to make a path or to make room for something. A very basic puzzle might require you to move some boxes or other items into a specific order—for instance, largest to smallest or heaviest to lightest, and so on.
Buttons and switches are commonly used in games to activate machines, doors, and other items. They can be shaped in many ways, some obvious and some quite clever. For instance, for game purposes, a specific book in a bookshelf that operates a secret panel could be considered a switch.
Sometimes the button or switch is a single object that controls a single result. However, sometimes buttons and switches are used in combinations, and you must either manipulate them in a certain order or manipulate several of them sequentially. In multiplayer games, some buttons and switches must be activated simultaneously, requiring teamwork. Other times, the sequence or configuration of buttons and switches can cause different effects, such as moving a set of bridges into new configurations. For more on that sort of application, see the upcoming “Configurations” section.
You can use buttons and switches to:
Open doors and gates
Deactivate or activate barriers (see also Chapter 25, “Barriers, Obstacles, and Detectors”)
Release or trap a person or creature
Lower and raise drawbridges
Start and stop machines (see also Chapter 19, “Objects and Locations”)
Open or lock a container
Activate or deactivate a bomb or other dangerous device
Activate or deactivate a weapon
Create musical sequences or specific sounds
Control remote sensors
Reveal a hidden message
Operate communication or computer-like equipment
Another type of puzzle could be finding a key to open a door, chest, and so on. Keys can come in all shapes and sizes; they don’t all have to be standard skeleton keys from gothic novels. In the broadest sense, a key is anything that allows a player to gain entry into an otherwise closed location or container. Keys are used all too often in games, without much variation. However, it is possible to create not-so-obvious keys—consider the following possibilities:
A weapon
A severed head (or hand), perhaps to use the fingerprint to gain access to a secure facility—or something more obscure and arcane...
A person or creature
A piece of fruit (before it spoils, hopefully)
A ring, bracelet, talisman, tiara, or other jewelry
A basketball (or other sports object)
A special item of clothing
Magic glasses (or anything magical)
A tattoo
A glass of wine
A note
A headline from the paper
A sound byte
A musical sequence
A password or magical incantation
Configuration puzzles involve moving objects or causing them to move into specific configurations. When the required configuration is successfully created, there is usually some immediate effect. Often there is a very obvious change in circumstances, but sometimes there is no visual or auditory clue that you have successfully created a required configuration. Examples are setting movable platforms in a configuration to form a bridge across a chasm or stacking boxes (or other objects) in just the right configuration to allow you access to a high place or a clear path through a landscape. Configuration puzzles can often involve more than one setup. For instance, when making a bridge across a chasm, you might have to change the configuration several times to cross at different points or to reach different places. Examples of configuration puzzles include:
Movable bridges and ladders
Movable objects used to make a path
Movable objects used to access otherwise unreachable locations
Configurations of lights and/or levers used to accomplish any of a variety of different tasks (see also “Buttons and Switches” earlier in this chapter)
A configuration of movable objects that sets a trigger, such as unlocking a door or disarming a trap
Rotating mirrors used to aim a laser beam (or opening and closing sluice gates to redirect a waterway and so on)
A formation of people, creatures, or objects used to redirect the movement of other characters or to block their passage
A configuration of movable objects that weights one or more pressure plates to trigger some event
A configuration of movable objects that balances weight or that distributes weight in a specific way
A configuration of movable objects that forms a picture or text image
A configuration of components that creates a working machine or properly connects a machine to its source of power/information, and so on
Sequence-of-tasks puzzles involve a set of tasks that must all be accomplished to solve the puzzle. (In reality, all puzzles involve sequences of events, so this is distinguished by the tasks being strung together.) Most quests in games and many missions in mission-based games are actually large sequences of tasks puzzles. It doesn’t matter what the tasks are—scavenger hunts, killing enemies, finding missing items/persons/creatures, and so on. The idea is simply that the player must accomplish several tasks. However, one variant of this is that the tasks must be accomplished in a specific order. Specifying the order can make this sort of puzzle more difficult, particularly if doing so is complicated in various ways. For instance, it may be that a set of tasks must be completed in a specific order, but it’s very easy to inadvertently complete one of the tasks out of order, thereby screwing up the sequence. Another way to make this difficult is to require some prerequisite to completing a task, which in itself requires a task to be completed or an ability to be learned, and so on. (See also “Follow the Leader.”)
You must obtain a specific item, find a specific location, object, or NPC, and use the object there to obtain another specific item, which you then take back to where you got the quest originally. This second item is then transmuted into something—say a weapon—which you can then use to go after a boss or destroy a significant enemy installation, and so forth.
You meet someone who asks you to escort him home (or somewhere significant to him, anyway), and along the way you have to perform numerous tasks and solve numerous puzzles in order to complete the mission.
Follow-the-leader puzzles can have a couple of variations. One variant is a very simple sequence type of puzzle that involves repeating some action, as in Simon Says. This can be as simple as repeating a sequence of lights by pressing certain buttons or mimicking an NPC’s simple movements. These are generally simple puzzle games, either testing your skill with a controller or your short-term memory, or both.
More sophisticated follow-the-leader puzzles might involve actually following an NPC through a minefield or other dangerous location. If you don’t do exactly what the NPC does, you get blown up, fall off the edge, or step on the wrong stone/break the laser beam and cause the alarms to go off.
The challenges inherent in many types of puzzles can be enhanced by putting time pressure on players, meaning they have to solve and complete the puzzle—whatever it is—within a limited amount of time. For instance, you must disarm a bomb before its timer expires, or you must complete a specific challenge or test within a time limit. In another typical situation, you must push a button, pull a lever, or step on a pressure plate that opens a door, releases a lock, or disables a barrier, then you must race to that location before the door closes, the lock resets, or the barrier is put back into action. These sorts of puzzles can also occur with sequence tasks. (See “Sequences of Tasks.”) In some cases, you can make it to the goal in time. In other cases, it’s impossible. In the impossible cases, you must find a way to trigger the button or pressure plate in such a way that you can reach the goal. For instance:
Place something heavy on the pressure plate.
Freeze the button in the “on” position.
Use a gun or a thrown item to push the button remotely.
Get someone else to press the button or stand on the pressure plate, and so on.
Use some sort of magical spell that lets you remotely affect the trigger mechanism.
Use something that makes you go extra fast.
Short-circuit the mechanism so that it remains on.
Rewire the mechanism.
Break through.
Go another way.
Timing challenges can be arbitrary—the game simply assigns a time limit to the action—or they can be part of a narrative structure or story, in which case they make a certain logical sense within the game story/fiction.
You can see it (or hear it), and you know you want to get to it, but there is absolutely no way to get to it. Generally, these teasing puzzles are set to tantalize a player, and often the goal can only be reached at a later time. However, you will almost always try to get to it, and sometimes there is a way. The only solution for “wait until later” puzzles is patience and perseverance. This and the next type of puzzle (“You Can’t Do That...Yet”) are closely related. The purpose of this kind of puzzle is to provide a clear goal for the player to strive for, as well as implying that there are skills to be acquired that can make it possible.
Examples include:
A chest on the far side of a chasm.
An NPC who seems to be asleep and won’t wake up.
A strangely shining light high in the air.
An inviting weapon behind a locked gate or up too high to reach.
The sound of water somewhere nearby.
An NPC joins your party, and you know he has an important clue, but he will not speak about it or is temporarily unable to speak, and you have no antidote.
Like the “Obscure Object of Desire” section, this category is all about delayed gratification and is specifically about abilities. You can see what you need to do, but you aren’t strong enough, fast enough, smart enough, able to jump high enough, in possession of that magic or specific ability yet, and so on. What this tells you is that you’ll be able to come back later.
Barriers are anything that impedes your progress. Some barriers are created to redirect your movements. Others are made to be defeated, if you can find a way. Check out Chapter 25, “Barriers, Obstacles, and Detectors,” and specifically the section “Methods of Detection,” for more about barriers, obstacles, and detectors.
Some puzzles involve a seemingly ordinary or obvious situation, but the real solution is something quite different from the ordinary. For instance, suppose you are locked in a room and can’t find any way to open the door. You search the room and find nothing that seems useful. However, you do find some matches or a lighter, which you then use to set off the fire sprinklers, which in turn sets off an alarm, and someone comes to open the door. When they do, you escape. Or suppose you are guarded by some thugs, and you probably can’t defeat them in a fight. But you engage them in a game of chance (poker, dice, and so on) and ultimately start winning. Finally, you bet all or nothing against your freedom. The key to this kind of puzzle is to create a situation that looks hopeless, but allow some unorthodox way of solving it.
This is a classic sort of puzzle in which things happen very quickly—often at an accelerating pace—and you have to make difficult decisions in a split second. This is often a scenario used in arcade games, where the situation starts out slow and manageable and gradually speeds up until you can’t keep up without having superhuman reflexes. The instant decisions you make more or less constitute solving a puzzle, and sometimes you can develop specific tactical approaches to the chaos, which are even more like a puzzle solution. However, calling these types of situations puzzles does stretch the definition somewhat.
People are jumping out of a burning building, and you are carrying the net to catch them.
You’re trying to protect someone or something, and the bad guys keep appearing faster and faster. You have to decide which ones pose the most serious threat and take them out first.
You’re flying through an asteroid belt, and the small asteroids keep coming at you faster and faster as you attempt to avoid or blast them.
You’re trying to dig your way out of a cave-in, but the dirt keeps falling faster and faster as you dig. On top of that, you’re running out of air.
You’re bailing out a leaky boat.
You’re playing Missile Command.
Sometimes one solution to a puzzle may involve doing something antisocial, morally or ethically wrong, or against the nature of your character in some way. But that seems to be the way to solve the puzzle. In such cases, there is often another way that is less morally repugnant. However, creating a situation that has moral overtones can make players think and challenge themselves to find other ways to complete a task.
In many games, if you are given the quest, say, to kill someone, and you decided to let them go for some reason, you would not get credit for the quest. It would fail. But in a more clever game, failure to complete the quest under such circumstances could result in new game opportunities and possibly even better results in the long run. For instance, if the person you allowed to escape later crosses your path, he will be grateful and do something really good for you—something he could never have done if you had killed him earlier. Of course, he might have continued his evil ways and caused more havoc and suffering because you let him go, and you’d have to deal with that. But most games don’t allow for such gray areas and alternate actions. In most games, a quest must be completed, and if it isn’t, it’s simply a failure.
Think of ways your players might be able to make decisions about the outcome of a quest or other interaction, particularly one with moral or ethical choices, and think about how the game might be changed if they decided not to complete the quest as given. Whenever there is a moral dilemma or an ethical choice to be made, there should be an alternate path that occurs based on the choice the player makes. And any path should be full of opportunity and good gameplay. Rules of thumb: Failure is only a vehicle for more gameplay. Everything adds to gameplay.
Examples of moral dilemmas include:
Kill Them All. To get a special magical or otherwise desirable item, you must destroy the villagers who have it. Maybe someone else’s life depends on getting the item, and you have to make a choice between the person you’re trying to save and the lives of the villagers. Possible alternatives: Do something good for the villagers, and they give you the item you want. Or use stealth and steal it without bloodshed. Or even find someone outside the village who is capable of convincing the villagers to give you the object.
Precious Pet. Your path is blocked by a dog. If you try to pass by it, you will be viciously mauled. However, the dog is a little boy’s pet. Killing the dog will break the boy’s heart, but you can’t allow it to maul you, either. Possible alternatives: Perhaps you can find some tasty treat for the dog and divert its attention while you get past it, or even make friends with it. Or, perhaps you can talk to the boy and promise him something if he calls the dog back. Or you might find a way to tranquilize the dog without hurting it. Or, there may even be another path you can take.
Family Ties. You have been chasing a criminal or other evildoer, only to discover that the person you have been chasing is a family member (mother, father, sister, brother, wife, husband, and so on). Do you kill them or capture them and take them back to answer for their crimes? Possible alternatives:
You enlist them to help right the wrongs they have done so that they can be exonerated. Or, you let them go and justify it by your relationship to them, accepting the consequences of that action.
The Loved One. You must do something for the good of many people, but to do that is to sacrifice someone who is important to you (even yourself). For instance, a wizard has been struck down. Only he can save the world. But the potion that will revive him is also the only potion that can revive your sweetheart. Only one of them can have it. Generally, this is not really much of a choice, since to give it to the sweetheart dooms the world, and who wants to live in a doomed world? Even so, it’s an emotional decision to make. And what would happen if you did give it to the loved one instead of the wizard? Is that the end of the game, or does it open a whole new path of your character in a doomed world, trying to atone for having made the selfish choice? This option could lead to a much more interesting game. Not all failures are necessarily bad....
Endangered Species. In order to save the world or accomplish some exceptionally worthwhile goal, you must sacrifice the last creature of a particular race of benevolent beings. Or something like that...
All You Have. Sometimes you have very little of something precious—food, medicine, gold, magic fairy dust, and so on—and you are saving it for some lofty purpose. But then you come across someone in dire need. Do you use your remaining resources to help him, or do you let him suffer or die and go ahead with your original intention? And what consequences result from either action?
The Big Bomb. If you use your ultimate weapon, it will kill massive numbers of people, but you think it will end a war or stop something worse from happening.
Slash and Burn. Some situations involve destruction in the name of preservation—for instance, an army slashing and burning the fields to prevent a pursuing army from getting the food. Or perhaps poisoning a well or oasis in order to destroy a monster that has been terrorizing the area. Or burning part of a forest to stop a forest fire from spreading (called back burning). Can you make the hard choice? What happens if you don’t?
In some ways, all puzzles are riddles. However, riddle puzzles are generally given in the form of clues that are somewhat obscure and open to interpretation. The clues may be given all at once, by one NPC or by something written in a book, scroll, or parchment, or carved or painted on a wall, monolith, tomb, sarcophagus, and so on. The clues may also be obtained piece by piece as the player explores, and they will only make sense after enough of the riddle has been obtained. Sometimes the riddles describe a thing or place exactly. Other times they may only describe an idea, or they may actually be part of a larger riddle that must be pieced together. A good example of a famous riddle, which dates back at least to the ancient Greeks, is “What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three feet in the evening?” Interestingly, this same riddle can be expressed in far more poetic style, as in a translation from an ancient Greek named Athenaeus:
“A thing there is whose voice is one;
Whose feet are four and two and three.
So mutable a thing is none
That moves in earth or sky or sea.
When on most feet this thing doth go,
Its strength is weakest and its pace most slow.”
In case you’re curious, the answer to the riddle is Man!
Sometimes there are signs in the environment that point to something. I sometimes think of these as attractors. These can be as simple as animal tracks or an animal sound indicating that there is something nearby. Or they can be complex and puzzling, such as unexplainable burn marks or crop circles. These signs can be natural occurrences (as in the case of the animal tracks) or they could be artificial—made by some intelligence with an intention. An example might be if a being of superior intelligence left mysterious images carved onto cliffs. The images might be suggesting a new technology or way of thinking, but would only become important when people were ready to understand them. Often in a game, there will be clues in the environment that can lead the player to new places or new discoveries. Most often, they are made pretty obvious, such as a special glow around an area or a sparkle or other eye-catching device. However, they can also be quite subtle, such as a slight difference in the texture of a wall or a completely obscure pattern of lights that seems to have no purpose.
A mysterious light appears in the sky somewhere to the east.
A bush moves slightly in the path ahead.
You spot the tracks of an animal moving off in a particular direction.
There’s a deep, earth-rattling boom that seems to get louder as you approach in a certain direction. Or perhaps it’s the sound of running water.
As you walk along a certain path, you notice a mysterious design carved into the rocks or a strange totem staked into the ground at regular intervals.
You hear an animal cry in the distance.
Random NPCs walk by uttering the same mysterious phrase. You figure it’s a clue.
As you approach, a small animal scampers off through the bushes, revealing the entry to a hidden path.
A cloud of flies (or vultures) is hovering over something in the near distance.
You see a brief flash of light—could it be a reflection off a lost sword, a gem, or some other treasure? Or perhaps it’s just a discarded bottle. But then, even an empty bottle can be useful sometimes.
When exploring any world, whether it is a swords and sorcery fantasy world, a modern police or military adventure, or a futuristic environment, devices often play a role. Devices can be quite complex or quite simple. For instance, a door is a device. So is a computer. But the devices that are most interesting from a game point of view are those that require some effort to understand or operate. Their purpose may be mysterious. Or, their purpose may be quite understandable, but the challenge is in getting them to work. Or they may be easy to operate, but what you have to do with them is challenging. For instance, a gun emplacement may be simple to operate, but aiming, firing, and taking out advancing enemies might be quite challenging. The device may be broken and in need of repairing. Or it may require some specific kind of input—a key, a sequence of button presses, or a special substance to fuel or power it.
Operating the device can be the most all-important thing in the game, or it can be something quite peripheral to the main quest. The general requirement for the device to be a useful part of the game is that it fulfills some key role in the game or it does something very useful or very fun. For instance, a slot machine placed in the middle of a battlefield makes no sense. But a slot machine in the right place, even if it does nothing to further the game, might be fun as a diversion. If a device is not operational, getting it to run successfully must be fun or directly rewarding, or both. Because devices are objects in the environment, you can also check out Chapter 19, “Objects and Locations.”
Although there are too many examples of devices to mention, here are a few interesting ones. But think of how they can be used, not just for their primary function, but in other ways as well:
Telephones that can actually call people or that do something else (as in The Matrix).
Vehicles—all kinds of vehicles can be considered as devices that enhance gameplay. (See also Chapter 18, “Travel.”)
Clocks can be used simply to remind the player about the time, especially in games with time-pressure events. (See also Chapter 29, “Time Limits and Time Manipulation.”) But also, imagine that the clock was actually the key to time travel or a way to unlock a secret door, by setting it to a particular time, or in fact it controlled a bomb that needed to be disarmed.
Mystery devices can easily be inserted into games, and their uses could vary greatly. Some might be used to influence people, for instance, or to spy on them. Or they might be weapons of great power or controllers for the physical environment. A special device might be used to control an army of robots or to open/close cell doors in a prison. The possibilities are endless.
Computers can be used in hundreds of ways. I imagine you can think of a few.
Besides the more obvious devices, what could you do with an electric can-opener, a blender, or a microwave oven?
Devices don’t need to be realistic. What about a device that translates any language? Or a device that heals all wounds or resurrects the dead? These have been done already. But what about a device that can pack a house inside a pill-sized container?
Sometimes a character is forced into a position of sudden responsibility or required to accomplish tasks for which he may feel he is not qualified. The stereotypical example is the kid who must save the world in many early Role-Playing Games. Armed with a wooden sword, he must go out and conquer the greatest menace the world has ever faced. The odds seem stacked against him, yet he prevails. Frodo’s burden of the Ring is similar. The puzzle here is, how does the character accomplish his goals? The answer depends on whether this is a long-range puzzle or a short-term one. If the character suddenly has to put out a fire singlehandedly, it is short term. If it is Frodo’s Ring quest, it is long term, and the solution is embedded in the entire story. Sudden responsibilities could be considered a scenario (see Chapter 11, “Scenarios”) more than a puzzle, but what makes it a puzzle is when you have to figure out how to deal with the sudden responsibilities.
Examples include:
You are suddenly given the care of a young child. You must escort the child safely to a location. Or perhaps you simply have to take the child with you, and you have no idea what to do with it.
You are exploring a location when suddenly it catches fire. You know something important is there, so instead of fleeing, you try to put the fire out.
You go to talk to an NPC, and he tells you that the town/world/some person is in danger and only you can prevent a catastrophe. Now it’s up to you to figure out how to save the day.
The pilot of a plane dies or goes unconscious. You’ll have to fly the plane to safety, which means you’ll have to figure out how to fly—or die. Parachutes? Not on this plane.
You’re suddenly appointed to be a U.S. Senator or you become the ruler of a country suddenly, in the midst of a crisis (of course).
Sometimes a character becomes powerful by the attainment of special powers or the acquisition of powerful weapons and/or armor. As the game progresses, the character becomes dependent on this power, but if circumstances change, and the character suddenly loses the power of weapons or abilities, what then? This sort of puzzle requires the character to find a way to prevail when suddenly gimped and comparatively helpless. In some scenarios, the obvious solution will be to regain what has been lost. In others, it may require playing in the weakened state for some time, perhaps regaining powers and/or weapons over time.
Examples include:
You are in contact with something or in an area that weakens you and removes certain abilities.
Your weapons and/or armor have been stolen or destroyed.
You are under a spell or curse that affects your abilities.
You are suffering from amnesia.
You have gone back in time to when you hadn’t yet gained the abilities you’ve gotten used to.
You’ve taken a solemn vow not to use your powers ever again.
You are wearing a device that will kill you or incapacitate you if you use your powers.
If you use your abilities or powers, someone important to you will be killed.
The whodunit model is basically to pose a mystery and then discover its cause and method, and sometimes, in order to do that, you have to consider suspects and motive. A mystery of this kind can conform to the ordinary murder mystery genre; however, the concept also works with just about any mystery, even if the cause of it isn’t a person or being. A deserted village poses a mystery of its own, and it may not be the result of foul play or other intentional misdeed. It might, for instance, be that the villagers discovered a better location and simply packed up and moved. In many Role-Playing and adventure games, there are multiple mysteries to solve. Some are a large part of the ongoing plot, while others are merely side quests that pose a diversion and usually result in some incremental reward once solved.
Some examples include:
Someone has disappeared, and you are asked to find him.
Someone has died under mysterious circumstances, and you must figure out how he died (and who did it, if applicable).
The crops are failing for no apparent reason.
The sun has stopped shining. All is dark.
All the children in the village have fallen into a deep sleep and cannot be awakened.
The dogs are meowing, and the cats are barking.
Something has disappeared (it doesn’t matter what, as long as it is something that has been noticed).
For the most part, the specific puzzle types in the previous section were situational events that would most often be contained within a larger game context. However, many games are based on simple puzzle concepts, and their entire game structure depends on that puzzle. Games such as Tetris, Bejeweled, and other similar games have come to be known as puzzle games.
Puzzle games rely primarily on relating puzzle pieces spatially, basing alignment generally on shape, color, and various alignment options. Some puzzle games contain a significant element of time pressure, while others are meant to be brain teasers that can be played in a leisurely fashion. Some, such as Bejeweled, contain a non-timed mode and a couple of time-pressure modes that increase the challenge and create added tension.
People may argue over what defines a puzzle game. For instance, is Tetris a puzzle game or an arcade game? What about Breakout or Qix? Is there a difference between an arcade/action game and an arcade/puzzle game? Where do you draw the line? Does a requirement for manual dexterity determine the difference? For instance, is Qix more of a puzzle game than Q*Bert? Clearly Shanghai is a matching puzzle game, but what about a board game such as Scrabble?
Whatever the definition, it’s clear that certain elements and options can be found in puzzle games. The following list includes many of the elements that are found in puzzle games, although not necessarily in each of them:
Matching by color
Matching by shape
Aligning pieces
Constructing or reconstructing an image
Creating or recognizing patterns
Moving pieces
Rotating pieces
Changing the shape or color of pieces
Spotting differences
Memorizing
Shapes
Order or position of objects
Picture details
Words and/or numbers
Sounds
Trading positions
Selecting pieces
Time pressure
Wordplay
Crossword puzzles
Linking letters to form words
Word recognition
Anagrams
Trivia and facts
Eliminating pieces
Follow the leader (Simon Says)
Special scoring bonuses
Match more than three
Create additional matches
Finishing quickly
Special pieces (see below)
Special configurations
Longer-word formation
“Secret”-word formation
Puzzle pieces with special abilities or meaning
Wildcard pieces
Extra score pieces
Extra turn pieces
Special ability pieces
Extra time pieces
Capture of space (ownership and/or control)
Filling or emptying of spaces
Calculations (mathematical)
Combos
Planning and strategy
Speed sessions
No timer sessions
Multiplayer puzzles (competition or cooperation)
Finding differences/exceptions in an ordered system
Generally short-duration gameplay instances
Infinite replayability
Scoring and high scores
Sound and visual cues
Often single-player, though they can be multiplayer
One type of puzzle that has its roots in ancient history is the use of ciphers of various kinds. I’m using the word “cipher” to define a secret system for conveying information. Historically, information has been hidden in many ways:
In text containing transposed letters
In text containing letters shifted according to a certain formula
In text using certain words or phrases to represent important information (phrase substitution)
In text that could only be read with a mechanical device encoded with the correct “key” or built to specific standards (code sticks, digital and analog machinery)
In monographs or other complex designs
In pictures, using representational images and colors to convey secret information and meaning
Using color codes
Using hand signals
In addition, game designers may create new languages, such as a symbolic language of an alien race or a language based on runes or other symbols. Although not technically a cipher, such “new” languages can be used in the same way—to make information available, but only to those who can decipher their meaning.
Of course, riddles are also a sort of code—a way of conveying information in an obscure form that must be deciphered.
Most language-based codes are easily cracked using techniques such as frequency analysis, which can make pretty good guesses about the meaning of the coded text based on the general frequency of letters in the language the text was originally written in. For instance, in English, the mnemonic ETAOIN SHRDLU lists the most commonly used letters in order of general frequency. Simply by doing a general count of the occurrence of letters in a coded text and applying the letter “E” for instance to the most common letter and “T” to the second most common, you have a good chance of discovering some of the letters. Of course, if the first try doesn’t seem useful, you can continue to try other letters. Eventually, you will most likely solve the puzzle. There are also systems of analysis that take into account common letter combinations—bigrams and trigrams. For instance, in English the letter Q is very rarely seen without a following U.
Other types of codes require that you have a “key” to the solution—either a physical device that can be used to translate the message or the necessary information that describes the solution. For instance, some codes simply use meaningless phrases in place of the real information. For example, the famous Paul Revere phrase, “one if by land; two if by sea” was a code understood only to the American revolutionary leaders. A phrase such as “the day is dawning bright” might mean “attack at dawn,” but it could just as easily mean “wait until night.” Only someone who has a list of the phrase definitions would understand this code, although it can be cracked by obtaining the list or even by observation over time. Of course, most wartime codes were changed frequently and only specific information about the “keys” was distributed on a “need to know” basis.
Using code puzzles in games should be done with some restraint. Not everybody enjoys poring over a text message and trying to do a frequency analysis or spending an hour searching for meaning in a series of obscure images. However, coded documents and images can be fun and can add some mystery and intrigue to a game. The key is to make it clear to the player that a solution can be found, possibly somewhere in the environment or from a specific NPC. Another way to deal with codes is to drop hints and clues along the way so that the player slowly gains the knowledge required to solve the puzzle.
Codes might also be incorporated into the players’ bag of tricks. For instance, players might be able to send coded messages to characters in a single-player game. The game might be designed to require that the player use a specific “key” to code messages and prevent enemies from intercepting them. Or, in a Massive Multiplayer Game, player guilds might use coded messages that could be intercepted by the enemy but would not be easy to translate or understand.
Modern cryptography is based primarily on mathematics, and it gets very complex very quickly. Although a game that really delves into the arcane world of modern cryptography might be interesting, it will probably be the case that game designers will use modern mathematical methods as sort of black boxes for use within their games, if they use such concepts at all. Going into a lot of detail about data encryption standards and other modern systems would be far too intellectual and complex for most game players. However, having such systems exist in a game world seems perfectly feasible. But if any players are going to attempt to encrypt and decrypt modern coded messages, they would employ sophisticated computer equipment available within the game environment to do so.
Here’s a brief story that uses and identifies many of these types of puzzles....
Alfred is a stable boy, an orphan who one day finds himself imprisoned in his very stables with most of the residents of his village. A band of brigands has taken over the village and is preparing to steal all it has of value, then set it on fire, including the stables with all the villagers inside.
Alfred must first figure out how to escape. He does so by Putting Pieces Together and fashioning a rope and hook from wire that he slips over the doorway and uses to lift the bar that holds them captive.
Next, he must find the Missing Person—the village elder or mage. But to do so, he must make a Hard Choice by leaving the rest of the villagers imprisoned. He must slip out and replace the bar across the door. If he does not do so, the enemy will surely discover that the villagers have escaped. When Alfred finds the village mage, he is being guarded by two minions, who Alfred must deal with. There are several options, ranging from disabling them or killing them to fooling them in some way.
Alfred has no way to kill them, so he has to figure out how to Get It Right.... What will get them out of the way? He might call a false alarm. He might walk in and pretend to be one of them, then tell them they are needed elsewhere. Or he might bring them some strong drink, let them get intoxicated, and then slip the mage out from under their drunken noses.
Once the mage has been freed, he tells Alfred that he cannot defeat this menace without a magical scepter (or something like that), which has been hidden in a cave near the village for many centuries, just for such an occasion. Of course, the mage cannot go himself, so Alfred must Retrieve the Item.
Alfred finds the cave without trouble, but it is guarded by a series of Barriers that open by means of Buttons and Switches operated in a certain order and by Keys found in special chests. Alfred finds some weapons and armor in the cave and uses them to fight the monsters that guard the doors. Various pictographic clues indicate the Order and Configuration of the final series of levers that open the alcove containing the scepter.
While he is exploring the caves, he sees, on a high ledge, a marvelous-looking chest. It must contain something of great value, but he can’t get to it. This Obscure Object of Desire taunts him as he returns the way he came. In a sudden moment of Thinking Outside the Box, he tries using the scepter, and it allows him to float up to the chest. Within it is a jewel-encrusted sword—a magnificent weapon. Wielding the sword, he feels stronger, quicker, and healthier than he ever has before.
But as soon as he hefts the weapon, hordes of enemies pour from the very stone walls around him, and he is in a fight for his life. The enemies keep coming as he hacks his way, Managing the Chaos, to the entrance of the cave. Once he steps out, the attacks end, and he is free.
Alfred hurries back to the village to the mage’s hideaway. When he gets there, he finds the mage has been killed. Although he is convinced that the brigands could never have defeated the mage so easily, he has no idea who might have done the deed. He suspects an inside job or someone very powerful. This begins a Whodunit sequence. But it also means that Alfred must shoulder the Sudden Responsibility for the village and find a way to wield the scepter.
Luckily for Alfred, the mage has left him a clue in the form of a Riddle:
“Three become one and one becomes many
When up is down and down is up.
Front to back is not to be seen.
The longer is stronger
And the shorter comes closer
And a turn at the top
Is the difference...”
The riddle, once translated, means that Alfred must find two allies for the scepter to create a magical army when it’s held upside down; that the scepter can be lengthened or shortened, changing the effectiveness of a spell; pointing the scepter at oneself will cause invisibility; and, finally, that the top can be twisted to change the outcome of the spell. But this is all for Alfred to figure out, and the first thing he needs are two allies.
Alfred returns to the stables and sneaks back inside. He asks the Mayor for help, but the Mayor looks down on him because he’s a stable boy, and he suspects Alfred of having killed the mage somehow and being in cahoots with the baddies. The Mayor’s daughter, Miya, tells him privately that she believes in him and joins his party. They need to find one more person to join them, and nobody is volunteering.
Together, Alfred and Miya leave the village in search of someone who will believe them. Miya has heard of a wild boy who lives in the forest by himself. They decide he might join them, so they go in search of him (Missing Persons). The boy also becomes, in some ways, a Key to unlock the power of the scepter.
Miya says she has seen the boy down by a small pond, picking murkberries, so she suggests they get some murkberries on their way to the pond. At this point, the game turns into a Scavenger Hunt to find enough murkberries to tempt the boy. You are already involved in a Sequence of Tasks puzzle with the ultimate goal of getting rid of the brigands. However, now you are also on a Sequence of Tasks to activate the scepter and yet another to obtain the murkberries for the boy. Charted out it looks like this:
Goal: Defeat the Brigands and Free the Villagers
Sequence of Tasks using puzzle types from this chapter:
Escape
Putting Pieces Together
Get Help
Find the Missing Person (village mage)
Hard Choice (leave the rest of the village in captivity)
Save the Mage
Get It Right (free the mage)
Obtain the Scepter
Get Past the Barriers/Buttons and Switches/Keys
Order and Configuration
Obscure Object of Desire
Thinking Outside the Box
Manage the Chaos
Sudden Responsibilities: The Mage Is Dead
Whodunit
Activate the Scepter
Solve Riddle
Sequence of Tasks: Find Two Allies
Sequence of Tasks: Miya Joins
Missing Persons, Creatures, or Things: Find the Boy
Scavenger Hunt (get the murkberries)
Return to Village
Confront Leader
Solve Whodunit (who killed the mage)
Use the Scepter
Vanquish the enemy
So Miya and the hero find the wild boy, and he joins them after eating a substantial portion of murkberries. Returning to the village, Alfred confronts the leader of the brigands and warns him to leave or suffer the consequences. When the bad guys refuse to move, Alfred works the scepter, standing with Miya and the wild boy. A magical army appears and vanquishes the brigands. The village is free and safe again...but this is only the beginning of the story, of course. More significant adventures await Alfred and his friends....
Note
Note: Chapters that would be of significant help in creating puzzles are Chapter 9, “Storytelling Techniqes,” Chapter 11, “Scenarios,” Chapter 23, “Goals,” Chapter 24, “Rewards, Bonuses, and Penalties,” Chapter 25, “Barriers, Obstacles, and Detectors,” and Chapter 26, “Traps and Counter Traps.”
Puzzles are generally comprised of situations and solutions. In a game, a puzzle can be almost anything that challenges the player to think and seek a solution. So it can be a locked door or chest or a group of enemies up ahead. It can be an apparently uncrossable chasm or an obstinate NPC who won’t give you/tell you what you need.
In most cases, you’ll start with a situation, such as one of those just mentioned. However, the situation itself is less relevant than the specific goal you seek, whether it is information, someone’s death, an important object, or simply to open a door.
Goals, however, can often entail multiple steps—multiple smaller puzzles. For instance, if your goal is to rescue a hostage, the steps you might have to take could include a) sneaking into the prison, b) defeating or getting past the guard, c) locating the hostage, d) unlocking the cell, and e) getting the hostage out safely (which might entail several more steps). Each of these steps is actually a separate puzzle. For instance, to sneak into the prison, you might bribe a guard, kill a guard, find a back door, climb a wall, or get yourself intentionally captured in disguise.
Each of the methods you might use is dependent on the situation, but some methods can be used in more than one puzzle. Bribing or killing a guard, for instance, might be useful in a variety of situations. Climbing or finding an alternate route, using a disguise...all of these are methods that might be useful in other situations.
So now we have specific goals that might pertain to more than one situation and specific methods that might pertain to the attainment of more than one goal. There is one more aspect of many puzzles, which is the kinds of objects, skills, or tools that are needed. For instance, in some puzzles you must trigger a device that opens a door, for instance, and then make it to the door before it closes again. Imagine how helpful a speed spell or item might be in this case, or someone to help you by triggering the door while you stand there ready to go through it. As another example, what you need might be as simple as obtaining a key to open a lock. The key is necessary, however, so it is an object that provides the means to complete the puzzle, although obtaining the key itself may involve one or more specific puzzle situations.
Essentially, we have goals, methods, and means (in the form of tools, skills, and objects). To use my Puzzle Maker, then, you can simply:
Identify a situation.
Pick an applicable goal.
Select one or more methods that can be used.
Select the tools, skills, and/or objects needed to accomplish the method(s).
Note that sometimes something that can be a goal can also be a method. For instance, in some situations, the goal is to kill someone, and you must find out what method will work—such as poisoning, shooting, trapping, or tricking. These would be methods. But suppose you needed to get into a guarded building. In that case, perhaps killing the guard is a method and also a goal, because killing the guard becomes a situation in its own right, so a method must be found to kill that guard. But killing the guard is still the method you are using to gain entry to the building. Confusing? Try a few examples, and you’ll soon see that it’s clear when something is a goal or a method, even if they sound the same.
Goals are what must be accomplished. Someone needs to die. A door needs to be opened. You must obtain certain information. For each situation you have created in your game, pick a goal. What does the player need to accomplish?
Open something.
Destroy something.
Find/obtain an object.
Kill something/someone.
Repair and/or activate something.
Assemble or invent something.
Discover some information.
Get somebody’s cooperation.
Escape from something.
Get to a place.
Beat the clock.
Stay safe/alive/unharmed.
Set a trap.
Avoid a trap.
Get somewhere before someone else does (race to the finish line).
Make money (usually an intermediate goal leading to something you need the money for—weapons and armor, to buy a house, to pay back a debt, to pay a ransom, to pay for food, etc.).
How will the player attain his or her goal? What methods might work in the situation you have created? For instance, to operate a sequence of levers to open a vault, players might use Trial and Error, or they might obtain information from an NPC who knows the answer, or even blow the thing up (the Destruction option).
In designing a puzzle, you might want to offer more than one method to accomplish any given goal. For instance, the previous example listed three possible solutions. You could think of more if you like. It’s certainly more interesting if there are multiple ways to accomplish your goals.
In addition, some methods create new situations. For instance, if you want to obtain information about the proper sequence to use in the example with the levers, you create a new situation. Perhaps the information is located elsewhere in the environment you’re in. So you might try Search and Explore. Or the information you need is known only to a specific NPC. So you might need to use Persuasion (after you locate the NPC). Using the Puzzle Maker can be recursive, and you can design puzzles within puzzles as well as puzzles with multiple solutions.
What methods might you choose as solutions (or partial solutions) to your puzzles? Some suggestions:
Destruction
Construction
Repair or activate something
Circumvention
Sequence of actions
Search and explore
Sneak and steal
Information
Guess
Risk
Trial and error
Aim something
Balance something
Reveal something
Get help
Flying
Digging
Swimming
Jumping
Climbing
Camouflage
Persuasion
The environment and the skills and tools of the player often come into play when you are designing puzzles. Once you have a goal and one or more methods, then you might need to determine the means by which the method(s) will be carried out. Again, the player will employ objects from the environment or skills and tools they either have already or can gain. Once again, as with methods, if a tool or skill is not currently in the player’s possession, then a recursive nested puzzle situation is probably created. The simplest example is the goal of opening a chest. The method is to unlock it, and what is needed is a key (object), an unlock spell (skill), or a lock-pick (tool).
I’ve included a few ideas below, but because the range of possible objects, skills, and tools is, if not limitless, at least very large, this list is necessarily little more than a suggestion. You can use Chapter 15, “Character Abilities,” and Chapter 19, “Objects and Locations” for more ideas and examples of tools, skills, and objects.
Keys
Guns
Cannons
Moveable objects
Stackable objects
Objects that float or sink
Throwable objects
Levers
Buttons
Pressure plates
Doors
Locks
Computers
Bombs
Telekinesis
Super speed
Money
Riddles and other clues
Alarms
Traps (physical/magical)
Detectors
Puzzle pieces
Herbs
Potions
Magical spells
Trapdoors
Locked doors
Regular doors
Hidden doors and passages
In order to make sense of puzzles created this way, it helps to put them in some kind of organized form. Here’s a suggestion, though you may want to develop your own style.
Note that in many cases the means used to accomplish the task may generate another situation, method, and means. You can include these new situations and solutions within this outline, but it will soon get very hard to read. Another possibility is to name the new situation. For instance, in the following example I will describe a generic encounter with a locked chest. Clearly, if you don’t have certain items—for instance, a key—and you decide (or are forced) to use a key to open the chest, then you must have a key. If you don’t have the necessary key, then you must obtain one, and this sets up a new situation. In this case, then, you might use a specific name for the item (“ChestKey1”) and possibly a marker text, such as using italics for items or methods that can generate new situations/puzzles of their own, as in ChestKey1.
However, it may turn out that just about any object, tool, or skill, and many methods as well, can generate new situations. So you may simply want to keep those situations separate, but name each puzzle type uniquely so you can call them from within other puzzle descriptions. In the following example, we’ll call the first puzzle “GenericChest” and the “find the key” puzzle, “GenericKey.” There would mostly likely be a “GetLockpick” subtask and possibly others generated from this simple situation description.
GenericChest
Situation: The player has come across a chest. It seems to be locked.
Methods and Required Means: The first level is the method, and the second-level lists describe possible means to implement the method:
Pick the lock
Lock-pick (GetLockpick)
Open-lock spell
Use a key
Key (GenericKey)
Break it
Use a hammer or fists or another type of weapon or tool
Take it with you (not a common option, but could be implemented)
Burn it
Use a fire spell
Use a blowtorch
Use a match
Design Challenge
Look at your favorite games and notice the puzzles you encounter when playing them. Many games have puzzles that you would not necessarily notice at first, but, in fact, many of the challenges you face are some kind of puzzle.
Notice the roles of puzzles in these games and compare the puzzles you find to the puzzles in this chapter.
Can you find some that aren’t mentioned here?
Consider different types of games, such as First-Person and Third-Person Shooters and adventure games, Real-Time Strategy games, arcade games, fighting games, and so on.
What kinds of puzzles can you use in each of these types of games?
How and when would you use them?
Are there any types of puzzles that you could not use in a specific type of game?
Take any of your own game designs and consider the role that puzzles would play in them.
Do your puzzle ideas layer, such that you have puzzles within puzzles within puzzles?