The paradox of open world puzzle games

[Legend]

It's maybe my favorite genre yet it's funny how "broken" the core concept is.

Puzzles are designed to be solved in a specific order yet as an open world game, there's no way to know that order.

It's weird. You'll often spend a fair amount of time attempting to solve something that is literally impossible at that moment in time. Or you'll skip a puzzle thinking it's impossible, only to get stuck in a dead end shortly after.

Then it's odd how often these games essentially give away solutions as you progress further. It's like there is a metagame of trying to solve puzzles before they're spoiled by the game.

[Legend]

There is no solution. For my open world puzzle game, the best I can do is ground the game in realism and hide my intentions as the developer.

I don't want players to have meta thoughts about when a puzzle is supposed to be solved. Instead it should feel like puzzles are a consequence of the world itself. For example the last main puzzle is impossible to solve until the player has done stuff elsewhere, but it's not an arbitrary requirement. It matches what a real person would expect in that situation in real life.

[the-pi-guy]

Why not have Puzzle Level Scaling?


Two ways that can be interpreted I guess.  

- You progressively have puzzles unlock.
- You progressively have puzzles become more difficult. (for example, the 5th puzzle is always the same regardless of where you are trying to solve it.  

Spoiler for Hidden:

I don&#39;t particularly play Puzzle games, so excuse my nonsense. &nbsp;<br><br>And my two ways aren&#39;t always possible for every game.<br>

[Legend]

Why not have Puzzle Level Scaling?


Two ways that can be interpreted I guess.  

- You progressively have puzzles unlock.
- You progressively have puzzles become more difficult. (for example, the 5th puzzle is always the same regardless of where you are trying to solve it.  

Spoiler for Hidden:

I don't particularly play Puzzle games, so excuse my nonsense.  

And my two ways aren't always possible for every game.

Part of the fun of these games is that there's backtracking like a metroidvania. You specifically want puzzles that the player should come back to.

That's why it's a paradox. Can't have the good without the bad.


Progressively unlocking puzzles is standard but those puzzles are hidden behind other puzzles.

For example in the Witness there are a bunch of harder puzzles behind this gate. You're not supposed to know how to open the gate until you complete a different section, but isn't "solving puzzles" the point of the game? So some players would just get stuck here trying idea after idea until they either opened it or gave up.


Progressively harder puzzles like that don't work in these types of games since again you want backtracking, but I wish Zelda did that with its shrines. Would have been cool if shrines expanded on past concepts.

[the-pi-guy]

A message that says this puzzle is not solvable with your current toolset.

I can't remember what I was playing that did this. (Pretty sure I wasn't playing a puzzle game though)

[Legend]

Most of the toolset is knowledge so it's impossible to know what the player knows.



For example FEZ expects players to learn the language in a very specific way yet it's common for people to just jump past it, I know I sure did. There's no way the game could determine if the player knows the language until the player has solved a puzzle using the language, so it's a catch 22.

[kitler53]

the witness was "open world" but really it wasn't.   there was 10 or whatever puzzle concepts and all the concepts where grouped together in a way that made it very obvious which order you should solve them in to gain the knowledge.

the complex puzzles simply combined multiple puzzle concepts together.   each concept was distinct enough in presentation for the player to know they haven't gained the knowledge to know how 1 or more of the puzzle concepts need to be solved.


...also something about bad game design and a lazy developer.

[Legend]

the witness was "open world" but really it wasn't.   there was 10 or whatever puzzle concepts and all the concepts where grouped together in a way that made it very obvious which order you should solve them in to gain the knowledge.

the complex puzzles simply combined multiple puzzle concepts together.   each concept was distinct enough in presentation for the player to know they haven't gained the knowledge to know how 1 or more of the puzzle concepts need to be solved.


...also something about bad game design and a lazy developer.

It should be painfully obvious in the witness how you're supposed to engage with it, but still people didn't understand that.

Watch for a minute, starting at 7:30 lol