/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

Make it challenging. Solving the puzzle will be more rewarding as a result.

Don't do typical "block pushing" or "switch" puzzles. That's boring.

If you want to see some interesting puzzles, go look at the Witch's House or other similar games. They tend to have pretty good ones.

>>25655

>How do you approach making challenging and fun puzzles?

>Make it challenging

cool thanks

>>25770

Don't be too harsh, the rest of the answer helped get across what they meant. Helped me, at least.

>>25770

same anon, just no longer on mobile

yeah, sorry, kinda missed that part.

for the challenge, it should be balanced, and always fair.

start out simple and ease people into the concept. make the first puzzle fairly simple, but not retard-droolingly so.

whenever you introduce a new concept, you have to ease people into it. so, explain it. you can be cryptic about it, but, the introduction of the new concept should not punish failure as harshly as the rest of the game would.

never, ever make something impossible, unless it is very easy to reset. do not punish reseting in that case. test the puzzles extensively, so that you couldn't get yourself in a state of failure, with no chance of winning.

don't drop any puzzle concept after using it once. combine them together. use them in various ways.

let other people try your puzzles. see what they try first. they'll think of solutions that may not work in that specific case, but would work in a puzzle, that uses those same elements, yet is differently designed. use that.

the final puzzle, or final boss, should always be a test of everything you learned throughout the game. combine elements of everything into the finale. that's where you can stop being forgiving.

I'm basing this mostly off of something like Professor Layton, so I don't know how applicable it is to your project.

some autism right out of my ass. hope it helps, though.

For every level ask yourself, what do I want the player to learn in this level?

And you build the level around that.

>>25648

this question is missing a lot of context. are you trying to fit a puzzle into another genre or a stand alone puzzle game? what type of puzzle are you trying to make; a logical math puzzle or something with more lateral thinking? etc.

>>25648

There are two approaches to puzzles: One solution, or many solutions.

For the first, you'll want the solution to involve some leap of logic. Don't merely make it push block, get key; require the player to figure out why the inscription "move the mountain to reach the valley" is written over the locked door. Moon logic works here, to an extent--if your puzzle involves some alien form of logic in which doors are opened by plumbuses, then the leap of logic is harder, BUT you have to leave some clue as to what a plumbus is, or else you risk leaving the player completely unable to complete the puzzle due to sheer lack of knowledge about the puzzle.

Multiple solutions is my favorite kind. The player has a set of tools--"jump", "use", "swing sword", or whatever--and each one does something different to the puzzle. The goal isn't a set pattern of tool uses--as long as what you do accomplishes the goal's requirements, you win. Excellent example: a game called Gunpoint allows you to hook any electrical thingy to any other electrical thingy. Thus, light switches can be hacked to open doors instead of turn on lights--or a door can be hacked to turn off the lights when it's opened. Cameras can be made to move elevators instead of set off alarms. With a given goal--get to a laptop without being shot by the guards--there are many solutions, ranging from kmocking the guards out by slamming doors into them, to cutting the lights remotely and climbing along the walls, to going full Batman and kicking their asses from the shadows.