What Makes a Good Puzzle?
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- Äas pĆidĂĄn 15. 05. 2024
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Puzzles can be one of the most complex things in game design. In this video, I break down some great conundrums from favourite games, and share some knowledge from sharp puzzle designers, to find out what makes a good puzzle.
=== Sources and Resources ===
Level Design Workshop: Solving Puzzle Design | GDC
âą Level Design Workshop:...
A Good Puzzle Game Is Hard To Build | Rock, Paper, Shotun
www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015...
=== Chapters ===
00:00 - Intro
01:00 - The Mechanics
02:37 - The Catch
04:28 - The Revelation
08:01 - The Assumption
11:03 - The Presentation
14:49 - The Curve
15:55 - Conclusion
17:07 - Patreon Credits
=== Games Shown ===
Snakebird (2015)
Braid (2008)
Portal (2007)
Stephen's Sausage Roll (2016)
Induction (2016)
Yono and the Celestial Elephants (2017)
The Talos Principle (2014)
Cosmic Express (2017)
Deus Ex GO (2016)
Pipe Push Paradise (2018)
Inside (2016)
Lara Croft GO (2015)
The Swapper (2013)
Portal 2 (2011)
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (2010)
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011)
Hue (2016)
The Turing Test (2016)
Black the Fall (2017)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015)
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (2016)
Ittle Dew 2 (2016)
Agatha Christie - The ABC Murders (2016)
=== Credits ===
Music used in this episode:
Snakebird OST
k. Part 2 - 01 untitled 1, animeistrash
=== Subtitles ===
Contribute translated subtitles - amara.org/v/C3BEg/ - Hry
This was mentioned in passing on the video, but just to re-emphasize: not every puzzle should be that hard. You might want a couple easier puzzles between hard ones, to not only make the player feel smart, but to build assumptions to later subvert.
It's basically like any movie, game, or even life. Having non-stop intensity/difficulty exhausts you, and the opposite will bore you.
Pacing, however, shouldn't be a random mix of highs and lows. Imagine intensity roughly as a sawtooth wave. You want to gradually build up difficulty, but drop it off every couple puzzles. Of course, each "tooth" should vary in size and steepness to avoid making the pacing obvious.
The intensity of the game should also tend upwards, meaning that when the intensity goes down on that sawtooth wave it shouldn't go down to exactly where it went to the last time
@@jamalsachleben3026
Yup. It's like a slanted sawtooth wave.
Basically, the Braid puzzle Mark called a "trick" for no good reason.
Yeah whats the point of making a puzzle game if you are not going to teach them the basics
While I was watching this video, I literally paused it when he got to SnakeBird level 10, went on the app store to see if it was even out on iOS. Found it, played up to level 10, got stuck for about 20 minutes, figured it out, and continued the video only to see Mark explain the level in the EXACT sequence that I went through unconsciously. Great video Mark! :)
That was the one that made me quit! Feel so silly now that I see how it should be done. Guess I have to do more of "reconsidering the assumptions" later on.
Oof. Keep going, the game has some of the greatest puzzle design I've seen in recent times. (18 is my favourite semi-early puzzle)
Right? I mean, that wiggly mechanic is actually quite deep. Normally, I tend to solve the puzzle thinking that all objects are "statics". The fluidity of those birds really stumbled me. Hope I could manage to get to that level soon!
That is some dedication to the cause.
I also quit on level 10. I still remember mentally justifying it by telling myself "this is a stupid kid game." Which is funny because I really enjoy difficult puzzle games.
The snakebird soundtrack is fantastic :-)
wow a wild Xisuma !
I've been thinking about buying it but now I'm sold.
what are you doing here??
It's surprising to see you here
Dragonblade GMD watching great videos on game design, duh
I remember thinking I could design puzzles when I was a kid. Found out pretty quickly that I was wrong!
I managed to make a puzzle game but you were right it's hard to make puzzles.
IMPRESSIVE
Give us an example
Same,
That was the catch
Fantastic video. Puzzle design is fascinating and I'm hapoy to see you finally tackle it. One thing I will add is that if you're not careful, you can create a predictable rhythm of assumptions and "catches" that players catch onto over the course of your game. I remember playing through the room (fantastic game btw) and reaching a safe puzzle where I had to turn a dial in the correct sequence of directions to open a door. It's meant to be a moment of trial and error where you find the sequence by getting it wrong a few times and correcting your mistakes, but I was able to figure the sequence on my first try just by second guessing the designers based on patterns in previous puzzles.
So I guess the final, broader tip I'd add to this video is to think of your whole game as a puzzle in itself, and remember that players are building up assumptions across their entire run that you need to subvert.
Mother's Basement Video Games are the best.
I made a puzzle game for my capstone project, and it was interesting building off concepts as it went along. For the most part things were pretty straight forward, but sometimes I would find revelations within my own rule sets which would allow for sequence breaking or solutions I didn't want in previous puzzles. Viewing the entire game as a puzzle is a useful concept for both building more challenges as well as streamlining the ones that came before. And even for discovering what the rule set should be.
Kind of reminds of one of the developer commentaries from the first Portal, where one of the early test chambers had a second possible solution, and while it was ultimately much simpler and faster than doing it the "main" way you were highly unlikely to know or even think of it the first time seeing the test chamber because in order to pull it off you had to understand flinging mechanics only "officially" introduced much later in the game.
In the end they left it alone rather than removing it and forcing players to take it the "main" way because it both rewarded players on future playthroughs with a faster clear time for having more mastery of the mechanics, but also felt really satisfying inherently because the player felt like they had "tricked" or "beaten" the system when they solved a puzzle in "their own" way.
Actually reminds me of a recent Mario Maker video that CarlSagan42 posted. He's playing troll levels and makes a comment on their inherit puzzle design.
There's a challenge called Super Expert 100-man in the game where many levels (designed by random people) are designed to trick the player into making wrong choices, say by luring them with a Power Star only to be trapped by hidden blocks. Overtime you build up these assumptions and fall for them less and catch them sooner.
The troll level he was playing was working with those assumptions that he'd built up. So the correct solution was to go into the hole and grab the power star despite it looking like a Super Expert trap.
Here's his comment, but the first level he plays is perfect embodiment of what I'm saying.
czcams.com/video/SK4-xFl_dGo/video.htmlm56s
I find that it's good to create a rhythm and keep it up for a few levels to let the player start feeling like they "get" the game now, then break it up with new stuff just as they're starting to get comfortable.
Mark, one thing you didn't cover is giving the player the choice of several puzzles at once. This way if they get stuck on one, there are others to attempt. Snakebird's map is a great example of this, as is Infinifactory, The Witness, and Stephen's Sausage Roll. Portal 2 used a linear design which greatly restricted player choices, but they spent thousands of hours playtesting to make sure it would work. For an indie puzzle dev, I think giving your player's multiple puzzles to attempt at the same time (outside of simple puzzles that introduce new mechanics) is a winning design. Absolutely loved this video, and wish this one tidbit was mentioned because it would make this video "complete", in my opinion.
The Talos Principle does this very well too
that counts as 'level select design'
I always wondered why the Eggerland/Adventures of Lolo series went back and forth on this.
Baba is you does this very well too
A Monster's Expedition is also a great example of this!
Another thing to remember when making a puzzle game is that you have to want to continue. If it is just level after level of puzzles it can easily get boring. In the first half of Portal 2, you want to keep playing to see Wheatley again. The setting, music and entire mood of the game makes you feel lonely ,which makes you want to continue just to find someone to talk to.
This may reflect your preferences more than anything that can be generalized. Consider a game with no gameplay besides the puzzles, no narrative, and what can only be considered the tiniest excuse of a setting. Well, that describes Tetris (and its clones), Bejeweled and clones, Peggle, 2048, Sudoku, chess puzzles, Solitaire and variants, Minesweeper, Pipe Dream, Mahjong, crosswords, and similar things like Jumbles, and countless clones of all of the above. Not exactly a list of poor-selling games, and none of the above really give you anything beyond 'I'm solving puzzles to solve puzzles.'
Carter Brown What are you talking about? If youâre playing a puzzle game, youâre there for the puzzles, not for a story.
@@jensb3946 Generally true, but any extra incentive to continue and to mentally refresh the player are probably good inclusions too. Music and good sound design are also important to most people.
@@jensb3946 I wouldn't generalize. There's a heap of adventure games that combine riddles and puzzles into a narrative, think of The Cave or Little Nightmares.
While I do agree that things such as good character writing and trying to see "What happens next?" in the story is good to implement as something to motivate the player, what you just said isn't necessarily fact. You can make a good puzzle game people want to complete without all of the fancy character writing and dialogue. As long as you get a sense of "Aha! I figured it out! I'm smart!" throughout most of the levels, then that's already a good puzzle game as that feeling of "beating the system" is already incentive enough to push the player to the end of the game. Kind of the point of a puzzle game to be honest lol
6:25 I remember playing a Zelda game for the DS when I was a kid. At one point, you needed to copy something from a map on the top screen to your personal map on the touch screen. I poked at it for an hour with no idea what to do, but when I came back from dinner later, the puzzle had apparently solved itself. When I played through the game a second time, I got stuck at the same exact place. At one point, I closed the lid of the DS, and finally realized that touching the two screens together was actually the solution. I still remember the frustration I felt in that moment to this day. If solving a puzzle doesn't cause any euphoria, it's probably too contrived...
I would say if not considering nostalgia, I consider that puzzle to be of the same category as bravery grasp in BOTW, where the player is to figure out a mechanics which the game never told you. I know a lot of us like such puzzles, bur for me these puzzles just feelsâŠawkward.
For comparison, my favourite temple is Temple of Time from TT because this is the one which tells you the objective from the beginning. You know that every move you made contributes to the goal, and when I finally reach 8th floor and get that statue back, it really gives a sense of accomplishment (aside from the fact that I realised I forgot the big key).
Idk I love this puzzle, that's such a creative solution and really takes some out of the box thinking. The issue is that it halts the entire game to make you solve it, I think very obtuse and difficult puzzles like this are really great optional content, but when the game is at a stand still until you solve one, it's awful
But HOW do you get those three sausages grilled and reach the exit?!?
I think you need to ignore one of the grills entirely and cook two sausages on the same grill.
There are actually several solutions. It took me a lot of thinking and I figured it out but if you google the solution you will find a completely different one...
Good thing I own the game. I'll have to try it out.
I guess you could also push the right sausage up, roll it to the left side of its grill, push it down and roll it over it from the other side. Then you could just grill the other sausages the easy way and still have room to turn around to reach the exit.
i tried the game and can't even finish any puzzle lol, idk if i mistakenly play the sequel if there are any. but i can't even tell which one is level 1.
As Myst designer Rand Miller said, a good puzzle is one where when you look up the answer you go "of course, why didn't I think of that!?" If instead you go "I would never have thought of that" or "that's a stupid thing to do" the puzzle designer has failed. Of course, this helps you evaluate whether a puzzle is good, not design one. Games like Myst make things even harder for the designers because they're trying to present a believable world as well as a puzzle game. The elements of the puzzle must feel like it makes sense for them to exist in the world besides just serving as a puzzle for the player, which adds a layer of complexity. I feel the best puzzles are those where you don't feel like you're solving puzzles, but you're just trying to figure out how the world, or some piece of it (e.g. some contraption) works and that happens to be a puzzle.
My biggest pet peeve is puzzles that are easy to solve, but where the solution is difficult to execute. It means that you can't easily attempt any ideas you have on how to solve it. "I think this is the solution, but finding out if I'm right will take me ten minutes" is never a good thought to have during a game.
Myst/Riven/UrU are very interesting cases to bring up here because they focus primarily on a type of puzzle not discussed in this video, Myst less so than Riven/UrU. Their puzzles are not merely logical conundrums but also conceptual conundrums - they challenge you to understand new concepts that can only be understood by having a deep understanding of the puzzle's context. As such it is impossible to simply think your way logically to the solution, you must apply a more scientific approach with observation/hypothesis/experimentation/evaluation etc.
This is particularly noticeable in Riven which takes this concept the furthest. Aside from a few smaller obstacles there are really only two main puzzles in Riven (Rebel Hideout and Fire Marble). Many players regards these puzzles as very hard, yet from a logical perspective their pieces are extremely easy to put together. What makes them challenging though (Fire Marble in particular) is that they are presented in such a way that it is almost impossible to grasp the sheer scale of the puzzle without having a deep knowledge of how the world of Riven and it's infrastructure operates. As such Riven's puzzles are actually not solved by pure logical thinking but by observing the world and how it is put together, by reading about character motivations and history, and by slowly getting accustomed to cultural cues. In many ways this makes Riven more of a detective/archeology simulator rather than a pure puzzle game - even if the puzzle in the end is very straightforward and logical. It's just that Cyan won't allow you to complete the puzzle before you truly understand the world of Riven.
if P = NP then if you can evaluate whether a puzzle is good, you can construct a good puzzle :^)
I like Obduction for this reason as well -- it feels like the culmination of everything Cyan has learned so far. The puzzles are very much "aha!" moments, though sometimes it was _very, very_ difficult or maybe a touch unclear. But you have so many orders in which things can be solved, so...
mrBorkD Maybe we can use a Quantum Computer to construct a puzzle that is both good and not good until somebody plays it?
That is a truly excellent post, Dilandau3000, within the comments of this truly excellent video by Game Maker's Toolkit.
Interesting idea I've been thinking about : there are actually TWO types of puzzles.
There are 'ruleset puzzles' and 'adventure puzzles'.
Ruleset puzzles are the ones you discuss in the video - they exist mostly in puzzle games - in these, player knows the rules of the game, and the trick is understanding what sequence of moves will bring them to the ending (perhaps while pushing logic of the ruleset to its absolute logical conclusion). The trick to those is being able to visualize the puzzle in your head, and thinking several moves ahead, and thinking deeply about what you already know about the ruleset.
In adventure puzzles (as name suggests, mostly found in adventure games) where player DOESN'T know the rules of the puzzles, but puzzle is absolutely trivial once you do, and figuring out the rules is the entire point - e.g in Sam n Max S1E1, player is tasked with finding some swiss cheese for a rat, and has availiable a gun, and a giant pile of plain gouda cheese. Once player realizes the rules of the puzzle (that bullet holes in cheese can make it look like swiss cheese), solution becomes trivial, and can usually be solved in one-two moves. The trick to these is lateral thinking, to try to apply real-life logic to try to find out what the rules are.
Of course, there are also best practices for designing adventure puzzles - for example, making sure that the solution does follow either real life logic or in-world logic (otherwise we get 'moon logic puzzles'), that player KNOWS about all objects needed to solve the puzzle, to telegraph the solution in case of more obscure puzzles (basically, add some sort of clues or hints), and also making sure that there isn't e.g. a more logical way to solve the puzzle at hand that the designer didn't account for (if player has a retractable ladder in their inventory, asking them to climb a ledge by creating a grappling hook from a piece of yarn and a fishing hook might leave players seriously confused); and finally, NOT asking players to use outside world knowledge. If player needs to look some fact up to progress the puzzle, let them look it up INSIDE the game (Blackwell games did this beatifully with its in-game search engine).
The interesting part is that some people did experiment with trying to use BOTH types in their games - for example, in Witness, Johnattan Blow regularly changes rules of the puzzle, and figuring out the rules is very often an objective of the very first puzzle in the set - and sometimes it just goes for a straight up 'adventure' lateral thinking puzzle (like with the 'apple in the background' puzzle - if you played Witness, you likely know which one I mean.)
Of course, adventure games also often include occasional 'ruleset' puzzles to add some variety (often in some form of pipe/ventilation puzzle, or a puzzlebox holding a key item), but that's usually confined to one puzzle in the game, and can feel arbitrary and annoying if done incorrectly.
no cat mustaches
So Rubik's cube is an adventure puzzle. The whole point of it is to figure it out. Once you do you solve it in like 20+ moves
@@ayazahmadov7985
Rubik's cube would obviously be a "ruleset puzzle". There are only 6 faces to turn and you can easily understand what each turn does. Theoretically, a person can know the effect of a combination of moves of a Rubik's cube by knowing only its basic rules, without trying the combination on a Rubik's cube.
Side note: the optimal number of moves to solve a Rubik's cube is 20 or less (some cases are proven to require at least 20 moves, while all the cases are proven to require no more than 20 moves).
@Luc Bloom that's actually a great way of phrasing the distinction: the riddles are about figuring out how your expectations are being subverted, the puzzles are about figuring out what is permitted by the puzzle's mechanics
You could also make an adventure game and sprinkle puzzles throughout that take advantage of the adventure game's mechanics. Honestly, that could work as a pretty cool subversion. You make these mechanics that seemingly fit so perfectly with a specific genre of game. Sci-fi, Action, Horror, etc. And then you take those mechanics and create a series of puzzles utilizing those mechanics. That sounds like a decent blueprint for a videogame.
I remember watching 'Teens React to Portal' and finding myself being frustrated watching people struggle with the first puzzles, but this gave me an appreciation for how the game teaches you to change your understanding of how mechanics work. The kids struggled because they were new to the game and were looking at the puzzle with a normative logic, once they began to get their heads around the mechanics of portal solutions became logical. It became a real pleasure to watch people learn to understand the game for the first time.
Now they're thinking with portals!
If you play Portal in commentary mode, in one of the early levels they talk about having to design a puzzle specifically to teach players that you can use either portal as an entrance, because up until that point in the game you basically only enter the blue portal and exit the orange one.
When I showed my cousin Portal he got stuck on that exact puzzle for a long time because of that.
I'll be honest, when I first played Portal I just couldn't work out how to do most of the puzzles. I think I literally wasn't old enough to work it out.
This was great! If I could add anything, it'd be how important it is that the correct solution works the first time it is tried. I've created too many puzzles where the player tried the correct solution, messed up with execution, and wrote it off as the incorrect solution only to get stuck till they give up.
I'm so happy to see Snake Bird getting some love. Such a good puzzle game.
I love Snakebird's first half but really do not like the final puzzles. Some of the final star levels showcase what I think is one of the cardinal sins of puzzle game design, where the possibility space is so large that the solution ends up feeling very obfuscated and hard to get at even with random trial and error. I love puzzle games and wanted to love Snakebird but Star Level 4 of Snakebird made me quit the game on a sour note.
@@KuroOnehalf That's the last level I can't complete after a year xd
If you know zefrank's True Facts series, replace the word "bird" with Ze's pronunciation every time you hear it in this video.
@@KuroOnehalf that's why it was a Star Level. I couldn't finish that either, but you don't need to complete every level / collect every collectible / complete every side quest.
I actually found this pretty interesting to watch as a writer, too. After all, many challenges or mysteries in stories are essentially a kind of puzzle. Of course, there's differing factors at play there, as it's the characters who need to solve the "puzzle" and the finesse lies mostly in making the reader/viewer feel involved in the solving of the "puzzle" without making the characters seem slow or stupid. But there's still interesting correlations to make between a good video game puzzle, and a good narrative puzzle.
well one way to keep the reader from feeling like the characters are slow and stupid while still giving even the slowest readers enough time to figure it out, ad rewarding the quicker ones who figure it out sooner, is to put a forced deadline in the plot so the answer can't be revealed until the end no matter what the characters, or the reader has already figured out, such as the ferry not arriving with the police until the morning or something forcing the character to keep what they know a secret for the safety of the conclusion.
A like a mix of these broad videos and more specific ones
Where's the reply to this?
Right here.
"Every puzzle starts with its mechanics : a set of ironclad rules that governs how the game works .."
*BABA IS YOU:* HOLD MY BEER
The implicit rules: TEXT IS PUSH, TEST IS RULES. (plus some spoilery ones)
The game: THE RULES ARE THE RULES, LITERALLY
BEER IS HOLD
HOLD MY LITERALLY EVERYTHING
Baba is you
In a great puzzle, you immediately see the goal, spend the majority of your time in the level figuring out what you need to do to get to the goal, and once you figure it out you quickly are able to achieve the goal condition.
In a bad puzzle, you spend the majority of your time in the level trying to find the goal, once you find it you quickly are able to figure out what you need to get to the goal, and immediately afterward achieve the goal condition.
In a TERRIBLE puzzle, you quickly see the goal, you immediately realize what you need to do to get to the goal, and you spend the majority of your time in the level trying to achieve the goal condition.
and then there are puzzles which deceive you by making themselves look easy
Does that mean that bad puzzles are just exploration games and terrible puzzles are action games?
@@arandomhashbrown3756 no they were referring specifically to puzzle games
@@SuperDestroyerFox He was joking.
TotK shrine puzzles are 50% terrible
There's an aspect to puzzle games that I am deeply in love with that may not have been touched on here... Unintended Solutions and *intended* 'unintended' solutions. Where there's an alternate method of completing the puzzle that feels like you're "breaking the rules" to attain it, often involving more time and skill, being technically challenging to achieve, often giving - in my experience - a happy little thrill, when most of the time that solution will have been left in *intentionally* for one reason or another, like that one chamber in Portal where you can skip directly to the top of the exit elevator with a single fling, making the player feel extra smart for 'outwitting' the puzzle's boundaries.
Or most of the gold stars or easter eggs in Talos Principle which involve smuggling puzzle elements outside their designated areas. (Talos is such a phenomenal game imo, it gave me that very feeling so many times, and is the first puzzle game in years that's prompted me to not only go for a 100% completion run, but to also get all endings and bonus objectives and even easter eggs.)
the talos principle is the best puzzle game of all time. The star from the top of the building in the middle of the lake from Road to Gehenna was the hardest puzzle in the whole game( the only time I looked up on the internet for an explanation.
Portal Stories Mel had a puzzle where you required to make a loop out of self spawning cubes. The solution felt wrong, that I even checked to see if I glitched it. Nope making a loop was part of the solution
As a puzzle designer myself, I think one of the best things I've learned is you want to create a puzzle that is like a good math problem. That seems weird, but hear me out.
Puzzle games are like teaching people in the education system. You explain to them the basics, go over all the basic rules and goals, and then give them problems to solve using the things you've taught them. Puzzle games almost universally have a set of rules and interlocking mechanisms that are used in a specific series to overcome a challenge.
This is also how math problems are solved. You know the rules and tools you have and need to figure out which to use and what order to use them in to get the solution.
If you don't properly teach the rules and mechanisms then players will not be adequately equipped to solve them. Just like if an educator didn't properly prepare students then the students will have issues. Also, you can't give a student (player) something too complex at the start or they will get frustrated and give up. Having a good onboarding process is crucial for puzzle games. You might have the best puzzle game mechanisms out there, but if players can't grok it then it isn't going to do well.
I say coding is more like a puzzle game. For example, you may want to make a program that writes whatever you say, until you say stoo. As a python programmer
i = 0
While i
10/10 use of the word âgrokâ
I've given math support to middle schoolers, and my game design knowledge turned out very useful
I'm coming back to this after a year and I gotta say thank you! This video helped me win my first game jam!
Congrats!
I absolutely love your videos Mark, you're like the Nerdwriter for video games.
Griff
Unexpected.
Undetected
did you sign your youtube comment
Great video! That Talos Principle puzzle is a great example. I remember that moment really clearly, it was one of the most well designed moments of the game
Wew, what an undertaking Mark! This is such a vast, broad subject but, as usual, you tackle it superbly.
I kinda like mini-puzzles within bigger games, like the water pipe connection minipuzzle in BioShock. I think if you do a small thing _really_ well, it'll always come across as more accomplished. The Witness as well, just drawing a line. But, how many ways to draw that line. And Quantum Conundrum! Make something fluffy, _and_ jump on it.
oh hey dan root. Love your vids
Dan Root it's always about making things fluffy and jumping on it
the witness is driving me mad
The Rise of the Tomb Raider part at 14:22 is funny!
I played the game recently, and it is NOT "clearly impossible to get there in time". If you have good movement, you can get on top of the second platform and barely miss the ledge on the other side... Guess what I tried for 15 minutes before checking a walkthrough out of frustration :(
I tried the same thing for like a hour before checking a walkthrough.
Did a similar thing w/ Valkyrie Profile Lenneth.
There was a level with a section where an elevator was used to both travel and be used to lock and unlock rooms at certain times.
I did not know this, so I kept exploiting a terrain creation mechanic to unreliably climb up 'unscalable' walls only to be locked out of where I needed to go.
I haven't played rise, but I have had this exact issue many times with other Tomb Raider games
I used to avoid puzzle games, but when I started my curator page it was one of the few things that I could actually get to review (puzzle games are apparently a hard sell). I don't know that I'm necessarily a huge fan of puzzle games now and I can hardly say I know what separates a good one from a great one (though I'd still say Portal and Portal 2 are the greatest), but I can say after playing so many indie titles that there are plenty of things that can be done wrong. The most egregious issue is when a puzzle game forces you to perform an action that doesn't make sense in the context of the game. Whether it's pressing a button that wasn't clearly explained or using something in a complex way that wasn't previously used in a simple way. It's a sure way to get casual puzzle gamers to bail on your game. The second issue I encountered a fair bit was when you could just do the equivalent of "button mashing" to solve a puzzle you're stumped on. It takes away the only compelling element of the genre and takes away any feeling of accomplishment.
What made me enjoy games like Semispheres and Portal Bridge Constructor, outside of their aesthetic, was that you'd get these challenging moments of varying degrees but at the end of it, you used mechanics that grew upon themselves in a way that felt natural. It seems easy to make a puzzle that's way too easy and one that's way too, but making a series of puzzles that transition between them in an organic way separates a bad puzzle game from a good puzzle game.
Definitely introducing mechanics in simple ways and then using them in more complex situations is the best way to go. Starting with something very easy, then eventually combining them in ways which seem impossible to someone who didn't play up until that point!
I can't say it's the best, but I'd recommend checking out TRI: Of Friendship and Madness if you're still checking out puzzle games. It's a bit old now, but it can be quite good a times.
Looks interesting...
Did you just mistake the Weighted Storage Cube for an ordinary box?
I'm dissapointed, Mark, very dissapointed.
And he didn't use the term Heavy Duty Super-Colliding Super Button either. Or Thermal Discouragement Beam.
lol
It's just a box with Tumblr popularity
The *Aperture Science* Weighted Storage Cube.
Woah, I had no idea making puzzles is so complicated. It never even occurred to me that all those red herrings were added purposefully.
Lately I've been playing BoTW and, thinking about the game that I'm making, I was just wondering what made a puzzle good and not just look like a way to make the game longer.
So, thank you!
"... and it's effortless to execute the solution, which is always a plus in my book."
I'd even go further than that. To me, puzzles where the execution isn't effortless are not really puzzles at all. Difficulty should always come from figuring out the solution, never from actually executing the solution.
That is my main philosophy when designing puzzles. The goal should be clear, the rules should be clear, and the execution should be effortless.
"Be prepared to put in some hard work."
This is very, very true. I wouldn't call myself an expert by any means, I've made like one small puzzle game in my life, but keeping track of all possible solutions to a puzzle, the assumptions players make, clarity of the rules, difficulty curve of puzzles, etc, is a lot of work.
This is what I love about parkour and parkour games (in recent times especially Ghostrunner): They combine the clearness of goals (kill enemies, get to location x as fast as possible), rules (available movements and enemy behaviour) with a difficult execution.
For real, this is some of the highest quality content you can find on CZcams. Fine job again!
Ahhh that neat breakdowns of stuff I like so much! Obviously puzzles are not as rigid as the ideal structure you describe, but you say the same before going into them anyway. My fave part was the bit where you compare the Portal 2 and Turing Test puzzles to see how the little things make a significant difference in the satisfaction level you get from the puzzle.
Nice! This is the first GMTK I've seen which involved a genre I don't really play that much, and it made me seriously want to play a number of these games. Understanding the inner workings sometimes makes a game far more interesting, so, thanks! I enjoyed this.
Game Revo snakebird is incredible and pretty cheap. Itâll also make you feel like a moron in like, six levels so itâs good bang for your buck
That one in particular really jumped out at me. I might get it!
Game Revo Talos Principle is a bit less cheap and a bit higher commitment, but trust me it's worth it! One of the best puzzle games I've played.
I'm the same way with a lot of the console games he highlights, as I've played almost exclusively PC since the PS2 was big. Now to just find the time to play them properly!
This is super well done. I've designed quite a few puzzles in games and sort of stumbled on some of these principles by accident, but this really helped coalesce those ideas into something clearer. Excellent analysis.
Congratulations on getting 400K subs Mark!
Cheers!
Knight Warrior i am surprised - this channel is already worth at least a couple of million subs minimum.
Lyubimov89 So true.
+Lyubimov89 spread the Good Word of Mark the Brown, and subs he shall receive!
he needs 1 million.
Another fabulous video. I got to work as the Puzzle Design consultant on the 2nd and 3rd Law and Order games and you aren't kidding that it's tough to come up with a puzzle you're happy with.
3:27 Oh yeah! I remember that puzzle. It took me some time...
im so addicted to your channel, your voice and your passion combined is brilliant congrats on 400 thousand the first time i found your channel was your "how Johnathan Blows creates a puzzel"
what an incredible piece of writing. brilliant and intriguing introduction captures from the very moment of the video and does not let go. Builds up the content from what you've just learned about intricacies of puzzle game genre and present the next in a such a way that is similar to how a 'puzzle game teaches you from previous levels'. Please continue making such artful and quality content!
Wow, this was fantastic Mark! This channel is seriously something special, and it's incredibly admirable to see someone put this much effort into their content.
It was nice to realize I already knew basically everything in this video before watching it. Not to undermine the quality of the video (it's excellent by the way), it's just I've made a puzzle game before and I definitely think if I didn't know this stuff or didn't realize it while developing the game it would have ended up significantly inferior to the final product. I can't stress the importance of play testing enough. There was so much I learned from watching (yes, watch them play; in puzzle games that's extremely important) that wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise.
This was absolutely fantastic, thank you so much, Mark!
In the beginning of developing my first puzzle game. Making it small so to make it a practice game before a bigger game idea is done.
This seems like an amazing assessment, I hope this comes in handy during my level designing phases. Thank you for this!
Wow. This is great. Ive been pondering over puzzle design for months now, trying to figure out how I can break down a puzzle to make it great, and this is an exact and specific answer. Thanks a ton.
Excellent video. You really hit the nail on the head with how it should be effortless to execute the puzzle once you've figured out the solution in your head. I really dislike when setting up the solution to a puzzle is made difficult even though you know what needs to be done.
This is definitely one of my favorite videos ever, thank you for this! Super interesting and well done!
Was looking just for this video from GMTK since I'm working on a puzzle game for a college project. Your videos are always super helpful for game design (I have a huge list of notes from all of them).
the talos principle is very underappreciated. thank you for making it a part of this video!
Deadly Rooms of Death (DROD) is the BEST puzzle game series ever. Looks like Gauntlet, plays like a TBS that's totally deterministic, no rng. If you like puzzle games, you OWE it to yourself to check them out.
Google Flash DROD, it's a flash remake of the first game with stuff like achievements etc, the main catch is that it's free
Yes! DROD is definitely worth checking out for anyone interested in puzzle games. The game has so much more depth to it than almost any other puzzle game. A lot of that is based on a fan community that has been designing super deep and interesting puzzles for well over a decade. Also worth noting: the non-flash versions have free demos available that pretty much give you full access to everything other than the main story-line.
Damn perfect timing.
I was making a machine-based point-and-click game and this video came right up.
Thanks!
I haven't played a lot of puzzle games and I'm starting to like them.
Thank you for listing them in the description
I love that I'm already subscribed to you, but whenever I'm looking for a game design related video, you're always the top result there as well. :-D
Great video as always. You should run a GMTK GameJam for this concept, like you did for dual-purpose design last year---puzzle games are one of the easiest genres for showing creative game design, so it'd be interesting to see the results of doing so.
A solution to a puzzle must also be precise. If it is not there is a large chance that the player could just find the solution by doing things randomly. Another way you can stop players from stumbling upon the solution is to punish some of the wrong solutions. Even if it is just making them restart the puzzle. A game that really struggles with this is the mobile game, Monument Valley. While playing this I accidentally found the solution to almost every puzzle in the game just by walking around. It is still has a nice art style and unique puzzle concept.
This channel is like a dream come true for aspiring game designers. Thank you so much for the front you put in, very happy I found this đ
Thanks for this video! I am actually making a puzzle game right now and am doing a lot of research on the topic. Great video!
A puzzle design video from both you and MatthewMatosis? Christmas came early!
There's a recently released puzzle game called Baba Is You that I wish came out before the creation of this video, it's such a beautifully executed game that touches on nearly every concept in this video.
I've just discovered this channel couple of weeks ago and can't stop watching it. Thank you for all the clear and informative explanations about game design. For someone like me who's interested in game development, these videos are very precious.
This video is exactly what I needed. I've wanted to learn how to design game puzzles for YEARS but could never ever wrap my head around it. THANK YOU for giving me a fantastic starting point!!!!!
Wonderful analysis and video, as per usual. Thank you for featuring Lara Croft GO - it is, in my opinion, the best puzzle video game I've ever played, and I think it boils down to the fact that it repeatedly and consistently features so many of the elements you discussed (that, and it's incredibly well polished and atmospheric without being cluttered or detracting from your focus on the puzzles). The bonus levels in the (free!) DLC chapters in particular felt absolutely diabolical at first, but were so incredibly satisfying when you figured them out.
I realised just how out of my depth I was with puzzle design when I first tried to make a puzzle level in mario maker
Thanks for this explanation, I'm planning to make puzzle platformer game and this video was the help i needed for the level design and the mechanics.
Thanks for the video! I've been working on a puzzle game for about 4 years now and this video helped get me back in the puzzle design mindset after not working on the game for nearly a year.
That potato baking game frustrated me just from watching this video......love it
Sausage!
They're... sausages?? tho???
I downloaded The Witness and played it for an hour. Easy puzzles everywhere. Then I got stuck for an hour, and I literally started to feel like the game was bugged. Of course, my little brother who never played or watched me play the game instantly came up with a solution after I showed him the basic premise of the puzzle.
It's incredibly weird how simple solutions just slip past us when we have an assumption. Thinking outside of the box is something I definitely should learn to do more. But even when I try to do so, I still think inside a damn box.
Itâs like, you think outside of the box but then youâve just stepped into another box that needs thinking outside of all over again and by that point youâve used all your mental energy so you keep on hitting the same wall until you finally break and look up a walkthrough or just give up forever
Loved the video! Puzzle games are one of my favorite genres and figuring out the catch is often extremely satisfying. Really enjoyed seeing you break them down and show off some of the ideas behind making a puzzle good versus just obtuse or busywork.
Just discovered your channel not long ago. Your contents gave me a realisation that I might actually have a genuine interest in game-design. I also really like the engaging yet calm commentary.
I would disagree that the player shouldn't ever be figuring out what to do. In the broad sense, of course they should know what the end goal of the puzzle is, but sometimes figuring out what must be done to achieve that is more fun than figuring out exactly how that happens.
I guess he meant "what the player is trying to achieve", too.
Good video!
In my opinion, it's not so much all the details you explain here that make a good puzzle, but the point of it instead (although the details are important)
A good puzzle helps you teach yourself something, and that's most important.
The longer that thing has been in plain sight, waiting to be learned, the better the puzzle is.
And lastly, the simpler the problem and solution are, the better.
Great video. I like how well you explained the games you mentioned without wasting our time. To me, this is the most interesting subject I've seen you do because I love making puzzles in games that let me. It's actually hard for me to design levels that don't involve puzzles.
Designing a puzzle is indeed hard work because, often, some things don't work the way you intended so you have to change the layout of the room countless times including the shape & size of the room itself & moving one thing usually means you have to move other things or change some elements entirely.
The puzzle sometimes ends up requiring more steps than you originally planned & you may have to find the solution to your own puzzle.
I am in fact working on a puzzle game, so I really appreciate this video :) I kinda felt out some of these principles on my own, but it's really helpful to have them neatly collected like this, so many thanks!
5:35 Mark did not forget about Pi day!
I was just praying for a video like this. Will you answer more of my prayers, Mark Brown?
Thank you for spending the work to make this. And thanks also for subtly recommending those puzzle games that I hadn't heard of.
This is an incredibly precise analysis of such a vast topic.
I've recently worked on a puzzle game (not featured here) and the concepts you describe really manage to articulate the puzzle design process.
In my game, the player is challenged not only to complete the puzzle, but to do so in an optimal way (least amount of moves).
This is a great setup for the concept you describe as Assumption, which manifests itself in - what I had referred to as - unintuitive puzzle solutions. Meaning, puzzles where a "straightforward" solution is easy to spot but is inferior to a less apparent one.
This video puts a lot into perspective. Thank you, Mark!
Thanks for the video! For my game, I've been having trouble balancing between withholding knowledge from the player for him to figure out himself, and making it more obvious for him. Although I thought I had checked a lot of the mental checkboxes for designing puzzles, I still found players stuck at places they're totally not supposed to, even despite iterations of simplifying the puzzle - and I've been confused whether to keep it that way or not DX After watching this video I feel like maybe its the clarity of the communication of the elements of my puzzles that may be lacking. Maybe some subtle hints like lighting and shifts in the camera would do a lot more better than giving hits in a textbox. Or maybe players enjoy just solving it completely on their own more? I guess there's where all the needed playtesting goes to, and it's especially tough because the same puzzle can't be tested on the same person twice!
P.S. This video came at such a great time because I was agonising over whether I've been designing the game right after seeing people get stumped at weird places during the recent grad show my school was having. Still have a long way to go Xd
Amazing video, as always. I'm curious about why "The Witness" is not shown here, and that makes me wonder if "The Witness" adjusts to the premises here explained.
Keep up the good work, I always feel a rush of happiness everytime I see you've published a new video.
What a well researched video. I think this is a staple of how this channel works: thinking hard about the things people take for granted in games. Very inspiring stuff!
Congrats, Mark, you're improving quality over and over. Never been a real fan of puzzles but, as I'm ever trying to expand and broaden my interests, I'll be trying to look at them with a new gaze.
My favourite CZcams channel so far.
Yo, Mark, I'm really happy for you, I'ma let you finish... but Captain Toad is one of the best puzzle games of all time!
I know I'm pretty fucking late, but try "The Witness" it's also really great
Hey Mark, what do you think about "Dual Snake"?
It's a puzzle game that was recently released on Steam.
It has pretty interesting mechanics.
Loved the video! I recognized every step in the games I've played as you were mentioning them, I must say I had never thought about how they were done, and this video was really awesome as I discovered step after step in those games
Absolutely brilliant! I love how you managed to break this (frankly quite complicated) process down into manageable pieces. I'm very tempted to try and make my own puzzle game now! If I didn't have so many other ideas on my plate...
Mark, could you do a video on party games like Mashed, Mario Party and Crash Bash?
I feel like theyâre worthy of a dissection.
Me: my phone is at 10% so I am not going to use my phone
Phone: GMTK released a new video
Me: R.I.P my phone
Spaceface14 Dev well you just "wasted" energy, your phone didn't just die
I know, it was supposed to imply that my phone died because a new GMTK video was released.
I'm working on a 3d puzzle game with a level editor and this video is really helpfull ! It's helped me figured out whether or not I should implement such or such component in my editor, to serve a purpose. thanks for the awesome video.
I just wanted to say that you're doing a really great job with all your videos. You're my favorite CZcamsr right now and I'm constantly amazed by how your videos can explain things I'd never even thought about, and make me look at games I've played again and again with fresh perspectives :)
Keep up the incredible work!
can you do a gmtk about how in games like punchout you can make it fun, not tedious to replay the same thing
He already has a video like that about hitman, I think it's called "The art of repetition"
@Acedons I donât think those are the same kind of repitition games. Games like Hitman and Infinifactory are based upon trying to find different/better solutions for the same problem.
Games like Punchout, Geometry Dash, Super Meat Boy are more about becomming better at a skill
Games like Punchout, Super Meat Boy, Touhou etc. are fun despite constantly replaying the same thing because they're essentially action-puzzle games, so they have a puzzle part (finding a solution) and an action part (executing that solution). The games obviously become easier as your execution improves, but often, you can find different approaches that are easier to perform, or you just have to find the right detail to focus your attention on in order to succeed.
I'm surprised there's not even a mention of The Witness.
What a great breakdown of puzzles! I've been thinking a lot about this, and this really gave me a new lens to understand the puzzle of puzzles.
Great video! I made a couple of puzzle games recently and itâs cool to see that you share some of my ideas on how puzzles should be done.
Mark, if you have not already, please do a video on Atlus' Catherine :)
I don't know why, but I _really_ can't stand Snakebird. It's super frustrating for me.
There's a new game which fits these points surprisingly well, even though it's technically a turn-based tactics game. It's called Into the Breach and it's by the FTL devs.
You control three mechs on basically a chess board and have to protect buildings from giant bugs. You always know where the bugs will attack and every effect is deterministic and easy to understand. But there will almost always be more bugs than mechs, so you have to get creative with pushing bugs away from buildings, punching bugs into other bugs or their line of fire, pushing your own mechs around... Each turn is essentially a mini-puzzle, embedded into the larger one of the entire five-turn battle.
Of course, with each battle being partially random, it can't always have the revelation. But the variety of equipment and upgrades your mechs can have makes every situation different enough that you can feel smart all over again with every turn. And an optimal solution to each battle is always reasonable to achieve, but never easy.
The numerous examples make this video much more majestic.
I have been wanting this video for a while, and I am not disappointed. Well done!
13:09 You seem to assume that The Turing Test is trying to be harder than Portal.
Edit:Oh, Nevermind, It Has No Assumption
Not sure if you were implying Ittle Dew 2 has easy puzzles because the extra dungeons in that game have insane puzzles.
Nah, Ittle Dew's pretty hardcore. Just needed a random puzzle that was a pretty easy
Right on my dude. Great video as always!
One of the things I love about these videos is seeing all these interesting games gives me some new games to try.
i cant get enough of your video essays. this is probably my favorite so far. keep doing what your doing man.