Law 4: Puzzles Must Be Solvable by Real People in Real Life.
Articles
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by Robert Washburne |
The Perfect Adventure Game |
Law 4: Puzzles Must Be Solvable by Real People in Real Life.
One of the great satisfactions of Adventure Gaming is puzzle solving. And a truly great puzzle will satisfy us in two ways. First, solving it will actually accomplish something and second, it will actually allow us to solve it.
Puzzles for the sake of puzzles is not Adventure Gaming. That is another genre. A puzzle should be a mini-quest that stands between you and your goal. The point is that the goal needs to come first, then the puzzle.
There is a puzzle I need to solve in order to open a door. Great. Why should I want to open that door? Am I in prison and that is the only way out? Did I just see the Evil Nefarious go through that door dragging my Dearly Beloved? Or is it just another door in this big old building where I happen to be wandering around for some unknown reason? Which of the previous scenarios would give me the greater motivation for solving the puzzle? Which of the previous scenarios will give me the greater pleasure from solving it?
A great Adventure Game is an escapism fantasy. I am no longer flipping burgers and living with my parents. I am now the Great Adventurer and people’s lives depend on my actions. But this only works if I can really solve the puzzles and win the day.
Most puzzles in today’s games can only be solved by dead people or people who can see into the future. Every puzzle in a game should be solvable the first time by someone who is observant and clever.
Scenario 1: I am walking down a hall. Suddenly there is a bright beam of light going through me and a loud ZOT. I am dead. Ah-ha! There is a laser beam booby trap. I remember seeing a large mirror in the other room. I’ll just restore from the last save-game and fetch it. This is a puzzle that only a dead man could solve. This is a game that can only be won because it is only a game and you can save your position. I take some satisfaction in getting past this next step.
Scenario 2: I am walking down a hall. Suddenly, I notice up ahead that there is a bright beam of light which travels across the hall every few seconds with a loud ZOT. The wall where the light hits looks charred. Ah-ha! There is a laser beam booby trap. I remember seeing a large mirror in the other room. I’ll just fetch it. I was observant and clever. I was able to solve the puzzle on my own and the fantasy/SoB is unbroken. I take great satisfaction in knowing how clever I am.
Would that make the game too easy? Not necessarily, but it should become too easy if you are using a walkthrough. In a good adventure game, 90% of the players should be able to complete it without a walkthrough. And it should feel easy to only the top 10% experienced gamers.
If a player gives up and reaches for a walkthrough, then the puzzle has failed. If the player then slaps their head and says, “Of course! I just wasn’t thinking,” then the puzzle is redeemed. But if the player looks at the solution and says, “Now how was I ever supposed to know that?” then it was a bad puzzle. Period.
If a game is still challenging even when using a walkthrough, then it has been filled with busy work just to fill it out. This is a strong indicator that the story is not being emphasized.
If a game is still enjoyable, even if easy, when using a walkthrough, then the story truly is a winner and the player will probably buy the sequel.
One other general point – Real Time is not Real Fun. Adventure games tend to draw the cerebral crowd. We tend to be the kind of people who like to take our time, think and savor the experience. We tend not to like clocks breathing down our necks or having to perform actions requiring significant hand/eye coordination. We associate adrenalin with bad experiences.
Of course, there are players who like both experiences. But including real-time action sequences will diminish your target market, not increase it. Don’t believe it? Think of it this way: There are three types of players out there:
A) Those who only like Adventure games
B) Those who like both Adventure and Action
C) Those who only like Action games.
Gamers from A and B will buy an adventure game. If you add action sequences to an adventure game, you will not attract C, but you will lose A. All loss, no gain.
You might argue that there is another group out there, D, who only like games with both action and adventure. But you would have a hard time convincing anyone that they represent more people than group A.
Now let’s look at some puzzle specifics. There are four types of puzzles found in adventure games: Exploration, Dialog, Inventory and Logical/Twiddly.
Exploration: The first joy experienced by the first adventure gamer was when they typed GO NORTH and the computer told them were they went and what they saw. It may not seem like much now, but it was a Big Hairy Deal(TM) back then. Nowadays, exploration can still be a joy when the world the game is showing us compels us and pulls us in.
Exploration may not seem like a puzzle, but it has puzzle-like qualities. Were we able to go everywhere and see what there was to see? Were we able to avoid those areas that needed to be avoided without dying or needing a save-game?
But the source of most exploration frustration is the one-way trip to the next area. Were we able to tell that it was a one-way trip before we clicked through that last door? Are we confident that we collected all of the inventory, spoke to all the people and solved all the puzzles before leaving the area? Or do I have to be able to see into the future in order to know what I need to do before leaving?
Of course, exploration can be a puzzle. When it is, we call it a maze. The biggest challenge when designing a maze is keeping the player’s sense of direction. The worst thing is clicking to turn a corner, finding yourself facing an ambiguous direction and not knowing which of the paths behind you is the one you came from. Or going down a long corridor but not knowing how far you have traveled. I would know if I was really there. The computer maze should be just as easy/difficult as the corn mazes I experience every summer.
Dialogue: Dialogue trees have the potential of adding a bit of realism to a game. People will tend to react to you differently based on how you talk to them. Unfortunately, they are rarely implemented well.
Many dialogue “trees” are just lists of subjects you can talk about. The player is expected to select each one to hear what the character has to say about that topic until the entire menu is exhausted. There are two problems with this. First, why bother? If there is no interaction happening why not just click on the NPC once and get the whole dialog. The whole tree thing just turns out to be busy work.
The second issue is getting information out of order. You might click one topic and hear which color was your Aunt Sally’s favorite. Huh? Who is Aunt Sally? Then you click another topic to find out that you had a long lost Aunt Sally whom you never knew about. In a similar fashion, the emotion of the conversation might change at random from topic to topic.
Moral: There must be a reason to have a dialogue tree. Otherwise, just let the NPC say their piece and be done with it.
The other type of Dialogue Tree is one where the NPC asks a question and you can choose how to answer. The way you chose – friendly, aggressive, angry, etc. – affects how the NPC responds. This is a good puzzle as long as the player has some clue as to how to act before they get into it. We shouldn’t have to tell the future to know how to respond.
A good way to make these puzzles would be to expect polite behavior as the norm and give clues before hand if you need to be aggressive with someone. The bad way is to just designate NPCs at random as requiring different tactics, but not warning the player before hand.
Inventory: The most popular style of adventure game puzzles is also the most abused. In its simplest form, this puzzle is simply finding the key that opens the locked door. However, some developers appear to take sadistic joy in requiring players to create devices worthy of Rube Goldberg.
One of my biggest peeves with Inventory puzzles is the pervasive philosophy that “If it ain’t nailed down, pick it up.” I’m in a house. I see a piece of cheese on the counter. Why should I put that piece of cheese in my pocket? Have you ever walked around with cheese in your pocket? Can you imagine what that does to your pants?
I don’t know about you, but when I’m in someone else’s house I don’t go around peeking in their drawers and stuffing my pockets with whatever looks interesting. The puzzle should come first. Then, after you know what the need is, you can go back a get whatever it was you needed to solve the puzzle.
My other gripe is puzzles that require you to figure out how to use items for uses they were never intended for. If you need a crowbar to open a crate, then there should be a crowbar laying around somewhere. I shouldn’t be expected to know that I can take a rope and soak it in the Magic Juice so that it becomes stiff enough to use as a crowbar. That level of complexity is just gratuitous.
On a similar vein, why should I pick up the mysterious circuit board or mechanical thingy? If I have no way of knowing what it is, why should I have any hope of knowing what to do with it? I need a clue beforehand to motivate me.
Moral: The player gets maximum enjoyment from them being clever, not the puzzle designer. Random clicking on objects until you solve the puzzle by trial and error is not being clever.
Logical: Also called “Twiddly” puzzles because you don’t pick them up as much as you twiddle with them. The classic example is the combination lock.
The first issue is why the puzzle is there at all. Too often this type of puzzle is just thrown in to satisfy the twiddlers. They might be fun, but if they don’t flow with the story then they break the SoB.
Logical puzzles can be very satisfying, but only if they follow two basic disciplines. First, it must be easy to figure out how to manipulate the puzzle. Second, the solution must be available. This may sound obvious, but I have lost count of how many combination lock variants I have played where the solution was nowhere to be found. And the walkthrough agreed that the solution was not in the game.
Remember, if a player can solve the puzzle by being clever, it will bring much more satisfaction. Purely mechanical, repetitive twiddling with no thought involved is not fun.
Also, the average adventure gamer has not memorized the astrological symbols or the periodic table of the elements. If such information is needed, then it should be found in the game. Forcing a player to investigate outside of the game sounds like a neat idea, but by definition it breaks the SoB and forces the player to stop playing.
