Finally becoming a builder….. (Level Designing/Final Game Project)

With our current design, I was unsure how to even start any of our levels in how they are going to be interacted with, this is where I started to create more and more ideas on mechanics to be implemented. So first I had to research Puzzle Design and how to create a good puzzle overall. so the best place to start…. Google. No really, time to get some ideas from there

I mainly found a little archive of YouTube Videos that help my understanding of puzzle design and immediately realised a big correlation to Level and Puzzle Design, at least within the spectrum of a game’s engine and it’s important that these lines aren’t blurred and combine their power to create the best overall design. As a professional, I looked at the 2 main GDC talks to expand my knowledge and turned out to be very resourceful.

The First Video:

Level Design Workshop: Solving Puzzle Design by Jolie Menzel at GDC 2016

What I learned. Quite a lot, but the quick summary

• Puzzles focus on a dominant strategy and are games to find a solutions, not to win

• Puzzle games are about getting a key or getting a lock, normally as a combination of both or one at a time

• Methods of dialing up the difficulty : The steps to solve, revealing new mechanics or new information and/or new applications of the current mechanics

• Understanding the Macro Flow

• Understanding how to build a Puzzle

  • Knowing the players Goal - getting that key to the lock to open the door

    • Messaging the Goal

    • Messaging the steps to that goal

  • Giving Player Feedback - if negative feedback is given, make sure to be kind

• Finally test it and make sure the game isn’t too easy unless intended and make sure the game isn’t too hard

There are some references to others games where she highlighs how a mechanics is expanded upon making a simple curated puzzles. Jolie talks about Zelda The Wind Waker and it’s simple puzzle design, where the hook mechanics is used to swing between two different places, later the thing you hook onto becomes a switch adding a new mechanic to already existing one in the game.

Next Video:

Puzzle Game Magic Secrets by Brett Taylor at GDC 2019

What I learned. Also a lot and here is a basic summary as well

• Understanding a novice’s possibility space

• The two types of puzzle characteristics

  • Handcrafted - which don’t require a lot of skills to be repeated, offering a finite amount of puzzles and making the player excited for the next challenge ahead

  • Procedural - where the skills are consistently repeated offering an infinite possible puzzle and giving a more predictable experience

• Noise - Steals working memory from the player but doesn’t contribute to the puzzle - in Bretts examples the puzzle is simple and by adding more ‘noise’ at least in this case a visual representation of something the player would consider useful, but actually isn’t it allows the puzzle to be artificailly harder, when there isn’t anything different about it, but make sure not too much. If adding noise, start with none and then add.

• Simplify - Describe the solution, removing anything you didn’t mention

• Possible Level Purposes:

  • Teaching something

  • Reinforcing a skill

  • give unique identifiable moments

  • break up pacing

• Making solutions unabiguous - you want to make that solution easier to find rather than leaving it completely open ended as players will be asking questions and not understanding what they have done correctly. Wanting the player to come to the conclusion that either there’s something they don’t know yet and having to figure it out or just not good enough, but they can get there.

• Learn to cut unneccessary things - Understanding exhaustive design in puzzles

• Combining mechanics systematically/organically and the system births the puzzle and designer delivers them - with the aim of the puzzle, it’s almost as these mechanics you can incorporate them at any moment and the mechanics will handle the forefront of the goal for the player

And that’s a lot to take in, realistically but when going through both of these video, you can see there are a few common threads of thoughts when creating a puzzle experience for the player, so it allows me to think in that way too after such a long time deciphering what was being said.

My Reflection

What I’ve found now is creating a puzzle has a few elements to it, where I’m leaning towards handcrafting these puzzles and creating a game that is less narrative focused but still retains that element, moving up from one mechanic to the next. Mainly thinking of certain mechanics that can be delivered which fit with the consistency of the world as well as the general core mechanic we already have. I need to make sure that the flow of puzzle is there but also understanding the basics to help reinforce my point. Finally I need to system to birth the puzzle, I just need to make the mechanics.

So my main task now, is to use our already existing mechanic and create design three levels to help ease our player into the experience.