Level Design for Puzzle Games

1. Level Design for Puzzle Games (emergence basics)

2. Main Points • Level Design for puzzle games is the most game-designy type of level design because the design is the level • Designing puzzles is all about making the player feel clever • …which is really hard So, what’s a puzzle?

4. Emergence? • Simple Rules, Complex Behaviors

5. Emergence • Simple Rules, Complex Behaviors • Conway’s Game of Life For a space that is 'populated': • Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by loneliness. • Each cell with four or more neighbors dies, as if by overpopulation. • Each cell with two or three neighbors survives. For a space that is 'empty' or 'unpopulated' • Each cell with three neighbors becomes populated.

7. Level Design • Very few verbs • Very simple verbs • How do you make a game with very few verbs? • Simple rules, complex behaviors

10. Puzzle Level Design • A much greater creativity and expressivity than most games • A much greater space for level designers to run rampant

11. Main Points • Level Design for puzzle games is the most game-designy type of level design because the design is the level • Designing puzzles is all about making the player feel clever • …which is really hard So, what’s a puzzle?

12.      The figure below is a letter of the alphabet that has been cut of paper and folded just once. It is not the letter L. What letter is it?

13. Answer • Just to make things more exciting, the answer to the quiz above is the only letter that does not appear in this sentence.

15. Scott Kim, Puzzle Master • A puzzle • 1. Is fun • 2. Has a right answer

16. Chris Crawford: “Game”

17. Modalities: Word, Image, Logic From Scott Kim’s “The Puzzle Maker’s Survival Kit” – GDC 2003

18. Modalities: Combinations

19. Five genres

20. A Good Puzzle? • The Sweet Spot • Experience: Clever • Perceptual shifts • Flow “Not too easy, not too hard. Puzzles that are too easy are disappointing; puzzles that are too hard are discouraging. You know there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, so it seems that this puzzle can’t be too difficult. In fact this puzzle is hard enough that many people never get the answer. The perceived lack of difficulty helps keeps you interested.” - Scott Kim

21. Flow

22. Flow in Puzzles

23. GameFlow: Sweetser and Wyeth

24. A Good Puzzle? • The Sweet Spot • Experience: Clever • Perceptual shifts • Flow • ~15 minutes • “Microflow” • A binary metric of skill versus challenge • A test of a specific type of intelligence • Open ended problem solving • All or nothing • The ‘ah ha!’ moment

26. Assumed Knowledge • Player • Less assumable knowledge, the more difficult the puzzle (26 letters in the Alphabet) • Puzzles with extremely low assumable knowledge • Troy, Majesty, I Love Bees: ARGs • Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code puzzles • Designer • Apparent simplicity, complex solution • Subvert assumptions to create perception shifts • …to make the player feel clever • Progression Ramps

29. A Progression of Assumed Knowledge • A metric of what the player is thinking • A metric of what the player is concerned with/focused on • Not all that accurate if the solution is found by chance or using an inferior method

31. Psychology & Physiology • The Red Apple

37. Psychology & Physiology • The Red Apple • Sorting, Ordering, Modeling

38. 0.1234

41. Psychology & Physiology • The Red Apple • Sorting, Ordering, Modeling • Physiology: Brain Waves

42. Psychology & Physiology • The Red Apple • Sorting, Ordering, Modeling • Physiology: Brain Waves • Random Tangent: the Monte Carlo Technique

43. 7 47% 15 Crops Monte Carlo Technique Stochastic

47. Emergence • Simple Rules, Complex Behaviors • New Lexicon: Physics