Merging narrative with puzzles

A few posts ago (here, here and here), we discussed about puzzles, how to create them and what makes them challenging and immersive. Today, I want to talk about how a puzzle can be an interesting narrative component inside a game.

We have lots of examples, but let’s focus our attention on one specific series of games, so we can think about how puzzles can intersect with an action game: let’s talk about Resident Evil’s fourth edition.



This game (and many others of this genre) focuses its gameplay in a balance between action scenes full of despair and introspective moments, where the player must take a breath and calmly think of how to solve certain puzzles. In the example below we can see this: it’s a puzzle that uses lights inside a church. After the enigma is solved, the player triggers a new scene of action.



In a game like Resident Evil 4, the puzzles create a kind of a break in the frenzy action with zombies and other creatures. Those moments are very strategic to calm down the players and prepare the story for the next step.

Different from other shooting games, Resident Evil’s series uses the puzzles as a tool to its storytelling. Each mystery solved leads to an important narrative piece to explain the main plot. Another point deserves a highlight in RE4’s case: the gaming producers use different kinds of puzzles to test players’ “powers”. As Koster (2005, p.152) reminds us

“The toughest puzzles are the ones that force the most self-experimentation. They are the ones that challenge us most deeply on many levels – mental stamina, mental agility, creativity, perseverance, physical endurance, and emotional self-abnegation”.

There are many possibilities and many combinations. Let’s discuss more how puzzles can merge with different kinds of gaming plots.

#GoGamers

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Reference:

KOSTER, Raph. A theory of fun for game design. Arizona: Paraglyph Press, 2005.

Game Design Lessons: Presenting Perfect Puzzles

Excelent game design lesson from The Game Prodigy channel. Simple, objective and ludic.



Puzzle games, by definition, focus on logical and conceptual challenges, although occasionally the games add time-pressure or other action-elements. Puzzles are a good format to structure interesting choices in games and this brief presentation synthesizes these ideas. In this short video we have inspiring ideas for game design and gaming concepts.

#GoGamers

Creating and solving puzzles

This is a post with special content from one great book: Jesse Schell’s ‘The art of game design’. It’s a mandatory reading about gaming concepts and game design. The author explains with awesome graphs – in a very intuitive way - the whole process of creating games. It’s a fantastic guide for everybody who works or wants to work in the gaming field.



Today I want to talk about one of my favorite subjects: puzzles. In ‘The art of game design’ we can find a special session (SCHELL, 2008, p.210-218) analyzing this theme. I don’t want to quote all content of this chapter of the book but I intend to highlight some essential points using a good puzzle from ‘God of War: Ascension’ as an example.

Let’s watch a short video of the game to discuss some important features of the puzzle creating process.



In this God of War’s challenge we can identify essential points about good puzzles. According to Schell:

#1 Make the Goal Easily Understood: when Kratos enters the great room there’s a wide view with every element to solve the puzzle: the mortal spiked wheel, the lever, the way with the concentric circles, etc. And the goal here is clear: stop the spiked wheel for a few moments to get the treasures on the top side.

#2 Make It Easy to Get Started: the scenario provides the player the option to try the levers and see how the spiked wheel stops on every obstacle. So, the player needs to investigate a logical order to achieve the challenge. The important thing here is: the interface of the game guides the player into the center of the room to use Krato’s weapons in the levers.

#3 Give It a Sense of Progress: each lever generates a different result on the spiked wheel and the order the player hits each one, too. This way, it is possible to generate a type of learning curve and the idea of progress.

#4 Give It a Sense of Solvability: each element in this part of the game creates a visual key of understanding to the player. Each lever creates a different kind of interference in the scenario and it’s possible to see, in fact, the solution.

#5 Increase Difficulty Gradually: this is not the first trial of the game. The player has probably passed other ones. It’s important to create a high level challenge on each stage. Otherwise, the game could be a boring experience.

#6 Hints Extend Interest: hints are a good way to engage the player inside the puzzle experience. Video games have excellent resources to do this. In ‘God of War: Ascension’, for example, we can see visual hints every time the player pulls a lever. In other situations in the same game the camera travels to show the player which elements in the scenario one needs to interact.

#7 Give the Answer: and a reward! After a puzzle it’s important to give some kind of prize to the player and it’s essential to tell them that the enigma was solved. It’s clever to show the player that they did the right thing and this part of the game is finished. In Playstation and Xbox games, a virtual trophy or achievement is another way to say to the player “congratulations, you’ve done this”.

Soon I want to address another issue from this book: interface.

Szia!

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Reference: SCHELL, Jesse. The art of game design. Burlington: Elsevier, 2008.

Puzzles

Today I want to talk about one of my favorite ludic genres: puzzles. Puzzles are a good format to structure interesting choices in your games.

Puzzle games, by definition, focus on logical and conceptual challenges, although occasionally the games add time-pressure or other action-elements.



We have pure puzzle games like Tetris (by the way, Tetris is credited for revolutionizing gaming and popularizing the puzzle genre), Bejeweled and Dungeon Raid. We also have a hybrid format that mixes puzzles with another gaming genres, as we can see in God of War and Resident Evil (action + puzzle). It seems that a balance between action and puzzle is a great way to structure a good narrative/gameplay to your game.

Fullerton says (2008, p.324) that puzzles are also a key element in creating conflict in almost all single player games. There is an innate tension in solving the puzzle. They can contextualize the choices that players make by valuing them as moving toward or away from the solution.

Ernő Rubik, the Hungarian architect and creator of the magic cube, said a long time ago that “the problems of puzzles are very near the problems of life, our whole life is about solving puzzles”.

Inside the puzzle genealogy we have many different examples: textual puzzles, puzzles with numbers, visual/color puzzles and much more.

I’m studying some puzzle logics for a new iPhone game design project. Soon, I want to share some impressions and sketches about the game with my readers.

Now on to your opinion.

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Reference:

FULLERTON, Tracy; SWAIN, Christopher; HOFFMAN, Steven. Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games. Burlington: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2008.