Puzzle Solving... or Problem Solving?
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- čas přidán 17. 06. 2015
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Most puzzle games are about discovering the one, designer-intended answer to a conundrum. Let's look at a different take on the puzzle genre, which takes inspiration from real-world problem solving.
Sources
Play Zach's games
www.zachtronics.com
Gamasutra: "New educational video game used in schools"
www.gamasutra.com/view/pressre...
Gamasutra: "Postmortem: Zachtronics Industries' SpaceChem"
www.gamasutra.com/view/feature...
Rock Paper Shotgun: Zach Barth talks about Minecraft
www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/...
Games shown in this episode (in order of appearance):
Infinifactory (Zachtronics, 2015)
The Talos Principle (Croteam, 2014)
Snakebird (Noumenon Games, 2015)
Portal (Valve Corporation, 2007)
Limbo (Playdead, 2010)
The Swapper (Facepalm Games, 2013)
Mini Metro (Dinosaur Polo Club, 2015)
Kerbal Space Program (Squad, 2015)
Spacechem (Zachtronics, 2011)
Minecraft (Mojang, 2011)
Infiniminer (Zachtronics, 2009)
The Codex of Alchemical Engineering (Zachtronics, 2008)
Bureau of Steam Engineering (Zachtronics, 2008)
KOHCTPYKTOP: Engineer of the People (Zachtronics, 2009)
TIS-100 (Zachtronics, 2015)
Human Resource Machine (Tomorrow Corporation, 2015)
Quadrilateral Cowboy (Blendo Games, 2016)
World of Goo (2D Boy, 2008)
Bridge Constructor (Headup Games, 2012)
The Witness (Thekla, Inc, 2016)
Music used in this episode:
Human Ingenuity (Infinifactory)
Working (Spacechem)
Resource Site 528.81 (Infinifactory)
In Motion (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross)
Opening (Spacechem)
Proving Grounds (Infinifactory)
Clip credits:
"Minecraft Compact Calculator" - FVDisco
• Minecraft Compact Calc...
"Minecraft - The ICE GPU 2.0" - FVDisco
• Minecraft - The ICE GP...
"Minecraft 8 Track Music Sequencer" - FVDisco
• Minecraft 8 Track Musi...
"Infiniminer Demolition Fun" - betasword
• Infiniminer Demolition...
Contribute translated subtitles - amara.org/en-gb/videos/h47qPP... - Hry
You've convinced me: I want "puzzle game" and "problem solver" as two separate genres now. Now to spread it.
And once they're different genres, games can be created that blend those two genres. xD
Since a little while, the Zachlike word has appeared. Personally, I use this one.
aren't strategy games the same as "problem solver"s?
@@nullvoid3545 I'd say that strategy games have a lot more depth, and it's more about solving parallel problems rather than linear problems. The challenge in strategy games is managing several small problems and getting them to synergize and coordinate, but the challenge in problem-solving games is one large problem that you need to break into smaller problems that all come in sequence.
That's how I think of it, at least. :P And another major difference is that in strategy games, one of the "problems" is another player that will do things that you need to adapt to. In problem-solving games, each puzzle is exactly the same each time you play it.
@@axelroussilhe978 now zach-like is the name of a book game hybrid made by zacktronics!
"Programming is basically the best puzzle game in the world"
glad I'm not the only one who thinks of it that way.
That's why I love my job. :D
Android 19 yes assembly is like a puzzle. but more modern languages are boring in comparison
depends on what you do with them
Prototype Inheritance "boring"
Programming is a pain in the ass when you're expected to make it do a particular thing & honestly that's why I hate puzzle games like these. There's a difference between programming for fun and building a website for a client & making it work
My favorite Programming puzzle solving moment that was inadvertently hilarious:
Writing code to scan through windows processes to kill a specific one, but failing to tell the program WHICH one to kill, so it just started killing ALL processes one by one. It was the first Blue Screen that I totally deserved and directly cracked me up. XD
Eric Hanson Same, it's also just funny when you're debugging a piece of code and you're like "alright, this part should be fine. I'll just toss in these arguments and it should spit out a 35" and it then proceeds to spit either something like 11,634 or false and you're just not sure whether to laugh or cry.
Hopefully before finding a really obvious mistake or looking through documentation forever and giving up and rewriting it.
One time I ran chmod -r /or something; the result was I had no access to use commands including sudo, since I was a beginner I reinstalled the os
I'm gonna be honest, that sound like one hell of a potential virus
@@OatmealTheCrazy both
... “first”?
Something that strikes me in playing Zachtronics games is that their scoring histograms actually give a decent emergent measure of the room for imagination in any given level.
One sharp peak? There's an obvious solution most people find.
Strong bimodal split? Optimizing for one metric or another will lead you to very divergent solutions.
Broad bell curve? There are a ton of ways to approach this level, and no objective consensus on which is best - lots of room to be creative and forge your own path.
Funny thing about Zach games is the way he makes levels he doesn't even know the solutions. He asked for solutions at one point for TIS-100 on reddit. So all he knows is that the puzzles are solvable. That's why the number of possible solutions is huge.
Douglas Gregory, nice observation!
I adore the histograms in Zachtronic games. It surprises me to hear that a lot of people don't like them. To me they are a perfect little window into your performance. A clumsier game might allow you to watch replays by other people, which would be spoiler-y and might steer your future decision making. But I am happy to steer wide of solutions and CZcams and figure things out on my own, even if it takes ages.
That makes me think of many Factorio players, who will look up an objectively most efficient way to do something and just copy it. That's no fun!
@@ourDreamcatcherSame with minecraft farms
Sure it’s 5 times more efficient than what you will probably build but building it yourself is hella fun
Brilliant video. I've always loved puzzle games, but never even realised 'problem solving' games existed. Time to gorge on some new games. Thanks for the introduction!
I know it's been 5 years since you commented this, but if you're still looking for a great problem solver you should consider Factorio.
Edit: Oh nvm, that other person already said it.
factorio
If you like puzzle games I recommend ALAN-13 Reformation, it comes out soon. I tested the beta and if you're interested in programming it's a fun way to get familiar with that, too.
4:37 its not "KOKTIPOYTOP" as you said its Russian word "Конструктор", which means "Constructor" )))
And is pronounced basically exactly like "Constructor". Cyrillic "н" sounds like Latin "n", Cyrillic "с" sounds like Latin "s", Cyrillic "р" sounds like Latin "r", and Cyrillic "у" sounds like Latin "u", so the Romanization of "Конструктор" would be "Konstruktor".
Go to 4:34 and listen, how he pronounce it. I'm talking about THAT problem, not about transcription )))
Коктипойктоп. That's funny.
At first I didn't even noticed that was Cyrillic.
Now you noticed it )))
Теперь ты заметил )))
What are the random ")"s for?
"Programming is basically the best puzzle game in the world" - I want a shirt with this
I really, really love SpaceChem, but it saddens me that I will never beat it. It is just too hard for me. I am not smart enough, and I am too proud to look up other people's solutions before solving it myself.
A very humbling experience, to sit for hours on end trying to figure out a puzzle, only to realize your solution is inherently flawed. And I'm still at the penultimate chapter! Who knows what the final chapter throws at you.
But I still return every now and then, if not to progress, then to improve my current solutions.
noseman123 I'm a programmer and it's too hard for me, so don't be too discouraged! It's a tough game.
noseman123 if it's any consolation, the "language" it uses is effectively a funge, descended from Befunge, a language specifically designed to be difficult for programmers to wrap their heads around. On top of that we also have to deal with concurrency and collisions. O_o I'm still chipping away at it too, but we'll get there eventually!
noseman123 What really helps is to have a friend over that likes headcracking puzzles as well, and to work at the problems together for a bit. By doing that you allow yourself to have some rest once in a while, while at the same time getting to look at the problem from a wholly different perspective.
MetrotomX5 I too am a programmer, and I believe playing SpaceChem has made me a better one.
as a programmer, I used to feel ashamed to look at other peoples' solutions to a problem, but I came to realize that there's really no shame in getting help. very often it'll help you see the problem in a new perspective and help you on future problems.
Antichamber feels a lot like the problem solving to me, even though i'm pretty sure most of the puzzles have just a couple solutions. Whenever I'd solve a puzzle/problem in Antichamber, i felt almost like i'd cheated the system, like i'd somehow done something the devs hadn't intended even though, obviously, they had. The way the block placing worked into all the puzzle stuff was really inventive, and lead itself to puzzles with very inventive solutions. I mean damn, I literally got out graph paper to work out my solution to one puzzle.
Thanks for the videos. I've been tinkering with game design and - as a method of teaching myself - am trying to build a super-simplistic puzzler. Initially, I was approaching the objects in absolute and concrete terms: Item 'mop' destroys item 'puddle', and that's it - the puddle checks to see that you're holding the right item and then dissolves. Much better is to code materials to apply to objects - so that 'water' always reacts to electricity or absorbency the same way (whether it's in a glass, on the floor, or in a swimming pool). That way, players will search for a material that makes logical sense rather than a specific trigger object that solves a specific puzzle.
This ties really well into your Zelda videos! A lot of "puzzles" in the first Zelda games would fall into the "problem solving" bin (particularly those in Zelda 1; later early Zelda games really only fit in that bin when you talk about bosses). More recent Zelda games fall more in the "puzzle solving" bin. Breath of the Wild looks like it will fall in the "problem solving" bin.
May I use this video for my presentation, please? I really want my classmates to start watching your videos, I think they would be very helpful for us.
+Zorua Hunter Of course!
Game Maker's Toolkit Thanks, mate.
It might be too 'Japanese' for your tastes but I'd recommend looking up Deception IV: Blood Ties.
In that game, you lay out traps in a specific order and try to knock the enemy from one trap to another.
Think Rube Goldberg machine, only more sadistic.
Like what you mentioned, there isn't only one single solution.
Every time I revisit the game, I find more efficient trap combos that accommodates the enemy's defenses and immunities, while getting better scores or killing them faster.
I'm not sure about Quadrilateral Cowboy. From what I've seen so far, it's very much a puzzle solver. You can't really write complex commands. You can't even do branching like "Do this, if that is fulfilled, do this other thing" or say "Do this, wait 10 seconds, then do that." All you can do is go "door1.open" and then, door 1 opens.
It looks like "go go gadget dos command"
Adam Millard - The Architect of Games has his own video about this divide, even using the same terminology of puzzles vs problems, and he discussed them in more depth and talked about the pros and cons of them.
For example, problem-type games have more replay value as mentioned, and don’t run into common puzzle-game issues with “moon logic puzzles” where designers who aren’t tuned in to how their players think can make nonsensical puzzles where it’s hard to follow the designer’s train of logic.
However, there is one major benefit to puzzle-types: since puzzle games can control how the player proceeds through them, they can integrate their story into the game much more tightly and make it more impactful. Games like The Witness and especially Portal 2 can have a much stronger story than problem-type games; moments like Portal 2’s Companion Cube sequence wouldn’t work in a game where you’re free to do whatever.
Adam made his video after this one, which is why it uses my terminology!
This video has been really helpful to me in thinking about Breath of the Wild.
This is a phenomenal series. Thanks for putting in the time and effort to spread this information. Your writing, speaking voice, and editing are all great.
Really enjoying the series, Mark!
You're one of the few content creators who I watch as soon as a new video rolls out! I really enjoy learning about game design and the little techniques designers use in their games.
Keep up the great work!
with that said, you can sometimes tell that time-attack racing games like Trackmania are problem solving games, as you're sometimes trying to look for different routes to complete the same track for the reason that they are actually unordered races, where your objective is just to pass through all the checkpoints on the map, no matter in what order, and reach the finish line as fast as possible. this can lead to many people trying to find and exploit various flaws that a map can have to optimize the completion time, which is as exiting to do just as when you do it in a speedrun, for example.
01:34 That Talos Principle puzzle gave me such a headache that seeing it here made me shout in alarm.
Trainyard (for iPhone, possibly other platforms?) involves 'programming' trains via setting down track. Made all the better by having a built-in level builder.
Oh wow, I played that game as a kid on my iPod. Fun game. :)
If no one has mentioned already, there's a free online game called Manufactoria. It's the first of these types of games I ever played, and it got me interested in programming in the first place.
There was an Amiga game in which you built modular battle mechs and then programmed them using modular code blocks on a grid (if rear sensor detects mech, go to instruction on right else go down...). You'd then send your mechs into an arena to compete against AI robots for control of resources.
You had limited programming space, so had to consider your mechs' physical strengths & weaknesses when making coding decisions. Otherwise you'd blow half the coding on a sophisticated missile-avoidance subroutine, say, and have nothing left for targeting.
If anybody can tell me what that game was called, I'd be very grateful.
+PyroTyger I don't know the Amiga game, but you just described Carnage Heart for the PS1 to a T.
Mark, The game "KOHCTPYKTOP" is actually called "CONSTRUCTOR" translated from Russian. Love ur vids!
Yeah, "KOHCTPYKTOP" is just an imitation of a Russian word (which uses the Cyrillic alphabet) with the Latin alphabet.
Fantastic Contraption is a fun game that I played a lot when I was younger.
The whole point is to get this object from point a to point B just by building machines to do it.
It can be cars, catapult... Or just a weird machine that spun the object in a large circle so you can get it to Point B but with the only problem is that there is no ground.
I remember that game! It was awesome.
One of the games I loved growing up was The Incredible Machine. Its definitely in the problem solver genre. There is no floor, and you have to build a machine out of any available machine parts to get an object from point A to point B. The object can be anything, but usually any of a variety of balls with different physical behaviors, like a basketball being more bouncy than some other balls. Great fun. Its the game I thought of when I read +U1timate1nferno's post.
Matthew Sechrist the problem with tim is that you usualy have 1 intended solution, and yeah you can find another one witch uses less pieces, but is more like a cheese rather than another solution
Roberto De Gasperi I don't know that that's true. As a kid I remember more often than not, my solution was different than the intended one (especially the pinball level)
Automating something in modded Minecraft also feels great
I knew about the cowboy game, but I'm glad you showed me other games like it as well.
Peoples reasons for watching this video:
%40: Trying to make a game
%50: For his excellent commentary
%10: For game recommendations
seriously tho the games on these videos are so good
There was a Flash game series I loved called Click Drag Type, where each game had 4 puzzles that all behaved uniquely and didn't tell you what to do, how to do it, and sometimes it was pretty vague about what the goal even was. It was called Click Drag Type because they were your only ways to interact with the game: clicking things, clicking and dragging things, or typing/using keyboard inputs.
There is this game I loved so much when I was in college called Armadillo Run. It's a physical simulation game where you build a machine to send a ball (the armadillo) to the destination, kinda like the Incredible Machine, but instead of the fixed objects, there are 7 kinds of materials to choose from to build your contraption (like rope, cloth, rubber band, metal sheet, etc.). So instead of being given a cogwheel or a lever, you build your own with some material. You have to take into account the weight distribution of your structure because each material has a maximum tension it can endure. There is a tension view where you can check in real time the force distribution in your structure. You can also put a timer on a part so it will be destroyed when its designated time hits 0. There are so many possibilities in the game, and it is super satisfying when you come up with a clever solution, or just come across an accidental solution. It is also fun to build a roller coaster and watch it run in first person (of the armadillo). I recommended it to my classmates (I'm physics major). It is worth checking out if you are into this kind of games.
Damn, the Spacechem's music is so awesome!!
Hell, yeah. Zachtronics really has a knack for picking good music to think to.
I love Zach's games. It's interesting, i am a software engineer myself and i would never write such low code to solve actual problems, but i find it quite enjoyable as a puzzle game. (For clarification: Low level code refers to the level of abstraction; his games are at the hardware unit level, where you only have the most basic of instructions at your disposal. In most cases that is not something one would want to worry about, so high level code is independent of the hardware and is then compiled to lower level code.)
For me it's pretty much the opposite. I just program for fun sometimes, but I don't really know how to get started with high level stuff. I mostly use only basic instructions or even esolangs. So the games are just what I'm used to, sometimes even more practical.
A good recent example of this is Oxygen Not Included, a base management game where you have to keep your duplicants alive by managing food, waste, water, heat, germs, power and morale, designing efficient systems to automate as much as possible. The goal is always the same, but the randomly generated map and the intrinsic difficulty of recycling and stretching your resources as long as possible never gets old.
A game like this i recently played is Opus Magnum. It is quite the same concept as Infinifactory, of being given equipment and inventing a solution in order to do the thing you are required to do. A thing the game did that i loved is that there was no limit on how many parts you can have, besides the starting ingredients. So you can use as many parts as you want and the challenge comes from trying to minimize the number of cycles or the total cost of the machine or the space the contraction takes up. If you loved Infinifactory you will love Opus Magnum as well.
I played the codex and "engineer of the people", but I didn't know that he had more awesome games! Thanks for that, and thanks for the video; made me remember how great puzzle games can be : )
I've been playing Dreams lately and it's logic and gadgets are another way of problem solving, except that you make your own problems. The thing about it is that you can also search up the logic you need, if you're stumped and see and tweak the logic someone else has made. You can get some genuine help just by looking at what someone else has made, or you can just copy it into your level. It's not as complex as coding, but it does have some things that are rarely seen anywhere else, like the intuitive visual coding method similiar to the one in the Little Big Planet games and that there's also many ways of making it, some more performance-friendly that others.
'2D Boy'?
...
Well, I guess they do share a team member with Tomorrow Corporation so you weren't THAT far off.
Smort Oh, that's a bummer. I thought it was all the same thing. Thanks - I'll add a note in the description
Smort I thought that looked an awful lot like Little Inferno.
NathanielLiles Hell yeah it did
I can't stress how good this video is... I'm watching this again after a few months... I personally sought out the video as reference. As a teacher, this fits very well with the concepts of teaching.
One game that is quite good in this "solving problems" topic is Caesar III (and all those classic city-builder simulators from the late 90s). There was no specific way of completing the level. I would say simulators are very interesting for this purpose. And of course, immersive sims. In general, we could say that those games with systemic gameplay work pretty fine with this.
Back in 1989, the game _Omega_ required you to build and program the AI of a cybertank and then run it through the battle simulations. The manual alone was somewhere around 250 pages. Definitely ahead of its time.
I'm really happy you also put in the description the games list.
I know this is old by now, but I just found this channel recently, and every new video I watch makes me want to buy a new game. I'm holding back for now, but I'm definitely gonna cave if I keep seeing these cool games on your channel!
I love it though, these videos are great!
Factorio...another good problem-solving game but that one focuses on logistics on a major scale.
Also, you should see optional solutions to Infinifactory. Even the very first levels have crazy solutions.
CZcams has been recommending your puzzle game videos to me lately, they’re all fanatic! Now I’m itching to make some kind of puzzle game 😆
Baba is You is designed like a problem solving game but since there's never more than 1 solution it's kinda reverted back to puzzle solving game.
My favourite problem-solving game is Robozzle. It's about assigning instructions to a robot which must travel through a level filled with walls and drops.
Unfortunately, a large portion of the levels are designed to have a specific kind of solution which makes them more puzzle-solvers rather than problem-solvers but there's a fair amount of puzzles that are more open-ended.
I've seen this video a couple times before, but never managed to realize how fantastic the comparison of programming and puzzles are. I've thought of it before, but never put it into words.
It's all about the creation of stable repeating systems. Hope you've played some of his stuff! (some of it is free)
I really like factorio as a problem solving game. You can make your factory very complicated, but if you think about it for a long time you can also create modular subfactories and connect those.
My favorite problem solver is Opus Magnum, Zachtronics' successor to Codex of Alchemical Engineering.
SpaceChem was one of the first games I owned on steam. I have so many good memories with it. Was one of my introductions to the indie scene along with braid and super meat boy.
3:03 I like how you used the song from The Social Network's soundtrack.
love this kinda of games, i still don't know assembly very well, so they don't feel natural to me like when i code in other languages. i also love how some games allow us to play with logic gates do create all sort of cool stuff, i also love electromechanics.
This probably isn't a very helpful comparison, but I find games with a collectible and customizable element to be problem-solving games in their own right. From CCGs where your goal is to make a functioning deck, to Pokémon-style RPGs where you can make near-infinite amounts of team combinations, there's a lot of technical wiggle room to solve your problem. I say "technical" because I admit both of these tend to become solved equations after a short period of time, because the "solution" is always "win before the other guy does", and there's always a clear and efficient way to that path.
This video got me thinking about the differences between the original Banjo-Kazooie games and BK: Nuts & Bolts. Gregg Mayles claimed that the reason for the drastic gameplay shift for the third game was because he felt 3D platformers had simply gotten stale and he was looking for some way, any way, to breathe new life into the genre. His solution was to make a game where the mindset of playing it isn't as much about "Discovering the solution to a problem" as it is about "The player can INVENT a own solution to a problem". That in itself was actually a very solid idea on paper and very forward thinking by encouraging players to play the game in their own creative ways and make their own fun with it. But the problem was that the way the idea was implemented was VERY unintuitive and simply not very exciting to play unless you're really committed to it. The levels had to be designed in a very bare bones way with the idea that the player will come up with their own creative solutions to solve the challenges with the vehicles they can construct, but the games steep learning curve and slow as molasses pace means that the player has to go out of their way to try and engage with its design. Minecraft more or less had the same idea that Gregg Mayles did, but executed it in a much more accessible and engaging way. I recall game developer Mike Stout saying in a commentary of Ratchet & Clank: UYA is that this is actually a common issue with designing puzzles in video games, as lateral thinking puzzles tend to be frowned upon by general gamers as theyre often just seen as frustrating pacebreakers, and prefer to lean more towards straightforward puzzles that make players 'feel' smart instead of actually forcing them to use their noodles to solve it.
Re-watching this in 2019, I had a bit of an "aha" moment at 4:17 - that's Opus Magnum!
Redstone is hella fun. I mean, I haven't replicated an entire working piano keyboard or Tetris in-game, but making really cool doors and complicated devices built off of timings and intricate circuits is the most fun I've ever had in MineCraft. I miss those days.
As a Computer Scientist I Loved this episode. :)
Personally, I like games that mesh genres together. Resident Evil 4 is one good example; it places action with precision gun aiming elements, some minor psychological horror, a few puzzles here and there, a minor emphasis on problem-solving (for example, you have to manage your interactive suitcase by making sure that you have enough block space for additional items and that you have enough ammo), and a pretty relaxing, atmospheric game to navigate through the end. If you see where I am going at it's just that future games need to take a look at Resident Evil 4 and place emphasis on a particular genre while maintaining optimal focus on other sub genres. Another example that you could look at is definitely Silent Hill 2, which I think achieved great things in setting the bar for video games in general and is a hidden gem.
SpaceChem makes my brain hurt. I really should give it another go though. It's one of those games that needs the player to have a eureka moment before they can really get addicted.
Once you've gotten a eureka high, you're hooked for life. It's the only drug that makes your brain cells stronger.
I clocked up 50 hours on Spacechem, loved it, and still didn't finish it.
Manufactoria is a fantastic flash game directly inspired by Zachtonics's work where you use conveyor belts and switches to sort or alter binary inputs.
Another example that comes in my mind is Silicon Zeroes. A game in which you must assemble basic electronic components in order to create small algorithms.
And on the puzzle game side, I really enjoyed Parallax. You have to find your way out of rooms with two dimensions.
3:04 Hell yeah man, that Trent Reznor TSN soundtrack. Now your videos are officially my favourite
This is one thing that I admire about Minecraft and the design behind it. Not only do you invent solutions, but you invent/choose your own problems as well. The best example is when I first encountered a dungeon, one of those small cobblestone rooms underground with a monster spawner in it. My first idea was of course to run in, kill all the monsters and destroy the spawner. However, I was carrying a lot of important items and was far away from home, so I didn't want to risk dying. What I did was I dug under the dungeon and destroyed the spawner from below, but now I realize that there are tons of more solutions. Flooding the place, dropping sand on all the enemies, digging a hole above to let sunlight in, and so on. You then go in and grab the loot. However, there's no need to stop there. As many players have already realized and capitalized upon, you can use these spawners to create complicated machines that spawn and kill enemies, sending their drops directly into your base through waterways or minecart systems. There is not a "true" solution on how to handle a dungeon in Minecraft, just a large amount of tools and items in a wold made out of building blocks, and the players will to not only own, but maximize their rewards while minimizing future effort.
4:35 "Kon..py...top" gave me a good laugh. It's literally "Constructor", just in slavic letters.
Also, your distinction between puzzle solving and problem solving is actually very relevant to U.S. math and science education today. Some suggested pedagogical practices involve having students solve puzzles (i.e. math puzzles, scientific conundrums, etc.) as a way of teaching content. For example, you might pose the question in a biology class how it could be possible that fungi and humans consume food in the exact same way, and in the process of finding the answer the students have to learn about digestive systems, embryology, systematics, feeding strategies, and evolutionary biology. However, we do not typically recognize the distinction you are making, and many of our puzzles fall in the "puzzle solving" bin rather than the "problem solving" bin, when really given the nature of scientific research we should have more in the latter. Thank you for making this video! It is very relevant to a class I am taking right now about math education and I will be sharing it with my classmates and professor this evening.
Fellow programmer here, great episode but I'm bummed you left out my favorite Zachtronics game. Shenzhen IO. Its basically the same but man what a treat that game is. Not to mention it comes with a modified soliataire game that's actually way better than normal solitaire! It's so good it got a standalone release.
I live in the UK and I played Spacechem in school one time. It was really fun and when I saw this video and recognised it I was so happy that I found it again.
Your videos make me so happy.
I am reminded of district planning in city building games like caesar 3 and the like. Some folks have already mathed out the top x most efficient solutions to residential / industrial / whatever district layout somewhere on the internet, but the question is how to apply it in practice, within the constraints of the scenario you are playing. So even if you have that memorised, it will not do all the job for you.
I remember showing some of my classmates in a game design class SpaceChem. They did not understand it and thought I was a weirdo. They're not wrong! lol
There are a LOT of these games out now.
SpaceChem, Factorio, KSP, Infinifactory, Factorio, Silicon Zeroes, Factorio, Shenzhen I/O, Factorio, Factorio, Production Line, and Factorio are among my favorites.
I feel like I'm missing one...
Warren Spector implemented this into Deus Ex, word for word.
Warren Spector is a time traveller: CONFIRMED. (Yes, I know what you mean :P And yep, a big part of immersive sims is giving you a problem to solve, not a puzzle)
4:36 Конструктор is a russian word that mean construction kit like Lego or something.
Or Constructor xD
конструктор using the lating letters is CONSTRUCTOR in spanish means builder like bob the builder
When you think about it, some stealth games are light versions of problem solving. Take Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory for example; you are given a somewhat nonlinear level with multiple objectives to complete and you have select gadgets at your disposal. Getting an 100% rating in some of these levels is a genuine brain teaser.
Also, Snakebird is really damn good and I highly recommend it. Best game I played last month!
Games like Doorkickers or some other strategy games also sit in this space. They present you with problems you need to solve using the tools available.
I spent ages last night trying to clear a level without losing a man or the evidence being destroyed. Each time playing around with timings, load outs and paths. And I'm sure I could further optimise and refine it.
Having recently rewatched your "Rise of Systemic Games" video and now this one, I think there's a connection - How you describe Zachtronics' games makes me think they're just systemic puzzle games.
if your looking for another fun game in that genre, "opus magnum" is a very funny puzzle game that even scores your levels by cost, area, and cycles just like infinifactory. Having played both games, i'd highly recommend both
My favourite problem solving puzzler is Factorio. All the problems you have to solve are one you created yourself and the puzzle is never truly complete, there's always an area that does not work quite as well as intended.
Just bought Spacechem for €0,75 due to this video, damn it's great!
Sometimes I see this problem solving approach in non-puzzle games.
You see, in Shiren the Wanderer for example, when you run into an Inferno and a Dadster Tank, you HAVE to stop and think about every subsequent action. And if you fail to solve this problem and die, the map procedural generation will make you see a million new problems to solve in many ways with many enemies every time you die.
If you actually read this, you maybe are not getting theses names, but I'll leave to curiosity. Shiren the Wanderer for the NDS or PS Vita are excellent choices if you want to someday.
@Game Maker's Toolkit FYI
Конструктор is the Slavic word for Constructor
"Programming is basically the best puzzle game in the world"
It might be, until after hours upon hours of debugging uncooperative javascript code you end up launching PS-Doom (a Doom source port that represents each process running on your Linux box as a demon) just so you can find the one that represents the Node.js runtime so that you can totally wreck it with the BFG.
There was a game about DNA sequencing that they actually put out TO Solve real world problems, and players would get results back from a real lab telling them what they created. There's so many brains out there- I think it's awesome to use a fun game to solve real problems!
I'm kinda late, but a problem solving game I like a lot is FTL (Faster Than Light). It's an indie game with 2D pixel graphics in which you control a small crew on a starship. The combat system is very predictable but also very diverse, which gives you the opportunity to compute loads of outcomes of tons of different actions.
Yeah I've seen it in action. And it gets more difficult as the game goes on.
OMG love the series keep up the good work!
With your bit on Programming, I whole heartedly agree.
Recently during a drive I created a Race system using basic Java by assigning different races to different numbers and go for a Yes or No question on a race that can duplicate abilities of another race and have it interact using those mechanics. All in my mind.
Nice
I'll admit, I tend to get overwhelmed with a solution to a problem is open-ended. Figuring out a puzzle makes me feel clever, sure, but I feel like something deep within me finds comfort in the fact that there is a solution and I just need to figure it out. I'm unfortunately not very good when it comes to "solving problems" like a programmer would myself, so maybe that's why I get turned off by the more "open" games... That, and they tend to take up a lot of time just exploring the the possibilities, something that I don't have much of these days.
Matthewmatosis has done really in-depth videos on all Zacktronix ganes. Defintely worth checking out after this video.
It reminds me of fantastic contraption where I would build a huge machine to bring a cube over a gap, only to discover that others were able to do it with two sticks and a string, getting better results!
This is an awesome video, some many cool games! Thanks!
This is a cool video but mostly this video just introduced me to a ton of great puzzle games. Thanks man.
My preference is to call them programming games, rather that puzzle games. As a programmer myself i feel that does a good job of capturing the spirit of what these games try to do.
Designing custom railway tracks and junctions in Transport Tycoon also gave me the same feeling, and it was mush more risky because if you design fails you will get in a real trouble
that redstone GPU was made by a buddy of mine, will link him to the video. There are multiple GPUs in the works on the ORE server currently... Mine can do 3D wireframes, or fast 2D sprite processing for basic ports of games such as Mario... I just have to get around to finishing it up xD lol. Last I checked a few ppl were trying to make their own version of that one.
Puzzles like that, where the goal is defined by your imagination, you just have to go find a valid answer. It's addicting as hell. lol.
when you said that Human resource machine is like programming, I immediately said "I need this game now", and so I bought it on my switch. yet to play it, but I know it'll be awesome.
This channel is such a treat oh my god.
Woo, Zach Barth! He's an alumni of the game design program I'm in right now. Awesome dude.
One puzzle game I remember loving was The Incredible Machine (3.1 version). It's almost a problem solver, except that you're often limited to a certain number of items, which restricts the number f potential solutions. The other extreme would be something like Scribblenauts, but but it's less compelling hen you can solve almost everything with a helicopter and some rope.
Thanks for another great video!
I'd say I'm someone whos an artist and a great problem solver but when I venture into coding I have issues remembering things, in the same way I do learning other languages.
I wonder if these games will be a genres of their own that I would be able to play.
I'm not saying thats a bad thing tho! I do love a challenge and am glad more programmer centric people have something to really get into!