Can puzzle games be cheated, or are "out of the box" solutions valid?

[Legend]

I saw this back to back in Her Story and The Turing Test (no spoilers).

There are puzzles that can be solved the way devs want, and with novel methods. It sure feels like cheating, but whose fault is that? Is the point of a puzzle not to solve it?


Say for example a code can be brute forced. If it only takes 10 minutes to brute force, it might be faster than using the intended method. Should a game be ok with that? Should the code take 1,000 hours to brute force so that no player does it this way?



My problem is that it often feels like games punish you for being clever. If you find a method that works better than the intended method, at the very least it feels like you missed out on part of the game.

So what should be done? Better puzzles with only one method to solve them? Putting less of a focus on how a puzzle is solved and give many methods?

[kitler53]

i mean, not sure how relevant this is.  most puzzle game literally can only be solved one way.   to cheat is to go online and view the answer.   that, imo, is really really dumb because then what is the point of a puzzle game?   i've cheated a few puzzles here and there but only after i can say i fully exhausted every ounce of my being and either need to cheat or give up.

in talos principle i had one puzzle in particular that i ended up solving in what was just the most mind mindbogglingly complex way.  i felt so proud of solving it for myself that i went online to savor all the people's tears from those that assuredly couldn't solve the puzzle.   turns out the puzzle was dead simple and it was me that missed the obvious.   still, i felt dang proud of my creative solution.

i like it puzzle games that have some freedom to support more than 1 solution.   i feel like that is part of what made portal soo special.


also i loved they way the witness handled their final challenge.  i never did end up finishing it but i got to the final puzzle element maybe a dozen times before i gave up.  i played after the time pause cheese was fixed but i promise i would have used it if i could.

[Legend]

I experienced it in the last two games I played so it has to be somewhat common haha.


No spoilers beyond the first minute of Her Story: You are sitting at a computer in game, searching through a video database. Put in a search term and it finds all videos where that word is mentioned. Videos are ordered chronologically and only the first 5 videos are returned. This is so that players need to explore and discover specific search terms that only apply to the juicy later videos.

I discovered it could be easily bypassed by just adding a random word to the search. So say "Mike" has 20 results. Watch the first 5, and then search "Mike he" to only get videos that include both "Mike" and "he." Some of the videos won't include "he" so you can view more of them. Then try with "Mike they" "Mike at" "Mike no" "Mike the" etc. until you have seen all 20 results.

It's stupid and not at all how the game is meant to be played but if I was really sitting at a computer searching a real video database, it's exactly the type of trick I'd use. There's a dissonance between what the puzzle mechanics allow and what the puzzle mechanics expect.

[kitler53]

I experienced it in the last two games I played so it has to be somewhat common haha.


No spoilers beyond the first minute of Her Story: You are sitting at a computer in game, searching through a video database. Put in a search term and it finds all videos where that word is mentioned. Videos are ordered chronologically and only the first 5 videos are returned. This is so that players need to explore and discover specific search terms that only apply to the juicy later videos.

I discovered it could be easily bypassed by just adding a random word to the search. So say "Mike" has 20 results. Watch the first 5, and then search "Mike he" to only get videos that include both "Mike" and "he." Some of the videos won't include "he" so you can view more of them. Then try with "Mike they" "Mike at" "Mike no" "Mike the" etc. until you have seen all 20 results.

It's stupid and not at all how the game is meant to be played but if I was really sitting at a computer searching a real video database, it's exactly the type of trick I'd use. There's a dissonance between what the puzzle mechanics allow and what the puzzle mechanics expect.

@top - you have a pc.  most, and certainly the best, puzzle game are indies these days.  that means I don't have access to them.  only the more "mass market"able games come to consoles. 

@bottom - doesn't sound like a cheat to me.  it exactly what I'd do too.  if they didn't want that they'd have limited the search criteria to one word or something.  

sounds to me like the game developer didn't get any external play tests because that sounds obvious to anyone not crafting the puzzle...