Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Puzzles
Obvious examples: An individual level in
Portal,
a problem in
Professor
Layton
, a dungeon in
Ocarina of Time
Less obvious examples: An individual level in
Super Mario Brothers
(sort of )
The first circle inside of the one for all interactive systems represents
puzzles
. Essentially, a puzzle adds a
problem,
which of course has a solu-
tion
.
Another way of putting it is that a puzzle adds a
goal
. Keep in mind
that the word
puzzle
conveys a certain sense of being difficult or brain
bending, but something doesn't need to be difficult to be a puzzle. A
dead easy puzzle is still a puzzle (perhaps just not one that many would
consider good).
The reason that a level of
Super Mario Brothers
is only roughly a
puzzle is that it has no random elements, and therefore has only one
optimal solution. Programmed speedruns
1
of the game clearly illustrate
this point. Nearly all single-player video games that have no random ele-
ments are puzzles only in the same way that
Super Mario Brothers
is a
puzzle.
Also less obvious to many people is that there is a category of in-
teractive systems that sometimes are called puzzles, which really aren't
puzzles at all, but games. Video games such as
Tetris
,
Dr. Mario
, and
Bejeweled
are often called
puzzle games
, probably because they involve
putting pieces together. Using our lens, these are actually games because
of their random elements and score-based systems. These kinds of games
are not about finding solutions.
A puzzle is essentially a problem that must be solved: when a puzzle
is being designed, it is being designed with a solution in mind. It is not
a competition, and it is certainly
not
a game. After a puzzle is solved it
usually stops having value to a person, much like a riddle whose answer
is already known.
Contests
Obvious examples: A weight-lifting contest, a hot-dog eating contest, an
arm-wrestling match,
Whac-A-Mole
Less obvious examples:
Guitar Hero
(or almost any rhythm game), most
pure racing games, many real-time games roughly qualify
Contests
add the element of
competition
to puzzles (which added the
element of
solution
to interactive systems). A good way to think about
1
Speedruns are attempts to optimize the play through nonrandom digital games. They
are often created using software that allows a user to program actions over time in order
to remove any element of human error so that the precise solution can be found.
