The Problems
of Puzzle Game Design
I facilitated the round tables
on the puzzle game problems 3 times; May 6,7, and 8, according to the
schedule. All three times the rooms were full or almost full, and the
participants demonstrated high activity in the discussions, which indicates
the importance of the theme and discussed issues.
May 6, 2:00 - 3:00
We didn't do introductions, and discussed the topics proposed by myself.
1.The first theme: it's really hard to be successful in the puzzle publishing
industry these days. What would be the best way to make the
puzzle title attractive to a publisher? We considered several title
properties:
- Stand-alone puzzle vs. collection
vs. story-based puzzle set.
- Mixture vs ."pure genre"
- Retail vs .on-line sales
- Puzzles vs. puzzle games
After the discussions we
came to certain conclusions:
- Nobody really counts on the opportunity
to publish a stand-alone title on a PC platform. So the real
alternatives are collections or story-based puzzle sets. The opinion
was that a collection (just a set of puzzles as separate small applications)
is much easier and cheaper to produce. The story based titles, however,
are more attractive to publishers. The brand opportunities and art
style for story-based collections are usually much better.
- What would be better: a mixture
of puzzle types in a collection, or a set of puzzled limited to
a particular type (e.g. only word puzzles)? We didn't come
to any certain conclusions; it seems that it really depends on many
other properties of the title. The only suggestion made was that
a mixture looks more attractive for the story based titles, because
they are limited by the story already.
- During discussion of the "retail/online"
question, there were many enthusiastic supporters for on-line opportunities.
The only conclusion we were able to reach were that it's really
good to go on-line with the innovations and experimental puzzles,
but if you have a strong title, retail will get you much more money.
- "Puzzles vs puzzle games" issue
didn't spark much of a discussion; the participants mainly gave
their personal preferences. The only conclusion was that the point
of view depends very much on the position - developers, publishers
and designers all have different preferences.
2. The second theme was the problems of the specific puzzle genres.
I proposed a list of the genres and their specifics were briefly discussed.
We listed the following types of puzzle: Word, logic, image, math, concentration,
3-D and spatial puzzles.
The discussions were:
- Word puzzles: how to implement the
new titles for the conservative audience of word puzzle players.
- Logic puzzles: how to balance the
number of rules to store and number of the puzzles to keep diversity.
- Image puzzles: why they are not
very popular?
- Math puzzles: is there any chance
for them?
- 3D puzzles: how to handle high difficulty
and complicated user interfaces.
The discussions were short
and emotional - no real resolutions were made.
May 7, 3:30 - 4:30
This time we had a brief introduction of the participants and asked
for a list of topics that people wanted to discuss.
The list of topics was very long - about 10 different issues:
- Puzzles for kids
- Multi-player puzzles
- Puzzles for girls
- Incorporated puzzles (puzzles within
the other bigger titles)
- Puzzles in the educational titles
- Puzzles for adults
- 3D- puzzles
- Artificial life puzzles
- Marketing of the puzzles
- Puzzles in action games
- Word puzzle games
...and several others.
The most popular themes
were then voted on: the multi-player puzzles and puzzles for kids won.
1. Multi-player puzzles.
This theme took about 40 minutes, and participants talked about very
different aspects of the multi-player puzzle games. There were many
ways proposed to organize two-player activity based on the puzzles,
and most of them were oriented on the cooperative playing aspect. Probably,
participants feel that this is the most appropriate way to design multi-player
puzzles. Then the topic was switched to games for more than two players.
The problems for this type of the game were indicated as the lack of
the player's resources to manage puzzle solving, and to pay attention
on the other players… Several solutions were proposed and
discussed.
2. Puzzles for kids.
The participants were very constructive with their input on this matter.
The formula for what makes a puzzle a kid's puzzle was worked out. Generally
the puzzle remains the same for kids and for adults, just some title
properties need to be adjusted:
- The difficulty of the puzzles has
to be very polarized and clear.
- The reward is much more important
to the kids.
- The theme and the objects should
not be very abstract.
- The Help and tutorial materials
for kids' puzzles require much more attention - they must be short
and clear.
3. Artificial life puzzles.
That was mainly brain storming - what could be done in this area.
May 8, 10:00 - 11:00
At the third round table we repeated the structure of the second one:
we made self-introduction and everyone gave the topic to discuss. The
themes occur to be more technically oriented:
- Difficulty levels in puzzle
- Relations between the different
parts in the puzzle
- Multi-player puzzles
- Educational puzzles
- Puzzles and other game genres
- 3-D puzzles
I started the discussion
with informing the participants about the two previous round tables
- what were the issues and what were our resolutions.
1.The main theme was how to manage the difficulty of the puzzles:
- Is it OK to decrease the level
if player does not perform well or let him lose?
- Educational puzzles and entertainment
puzzles - should they have the same or different structure for difficulty?
- How many levels would be appropriate
for the puzzle title: 3, 10 or 100?
- If we have 100 levels, is the "saw"
the best way to organize them?
- Are there hints to help to manage
difficulty?
- How to implement the hints into
the puzzles?
- How to organize the scoring for
the puzzles of different levels?
- How to charge for hints?
2. 3D-puzzles
This theme was discussed really briefly. Everybody agree that these
puzzles are very complicated for developers to implement and for players
to solve.
