this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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Adventure / Point-and-Click / Narrative Games

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What makes a satisfying puzzle? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I've been playing some of the more recent adventure games and feel like the quality of the puzzles has gone down. It often seems a bit like use multitool on object to solve every puzzle. Equally, I can think many older games where the puzzle was so illogical it broke the gameplay and felt jarring to me.

So what makes a good puzzle? What are you most satisfying puzzles ever? What about your least favourite?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

GMTK has done some videos on this, and does great observations on the gameplay designs of some games.

For me, a good puzzle is when the concept is introduced to me bit by bit, then extended from there. Unfortunately this can be a bit of a fine balance as some game will literally dedicate too many levels for each new concept, and so the puzzles bore out easily.

In other news, I've really been enjoying Paquerette Down the Bunburrows. Don't mind the "( ≧∀≦) I luv bunnies <3 <3" theme, the puzzles are neat and gets progressively harder, and has nice collectibles and secrets that greatly extends the gameplay.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Thanks, I don't know these videos will watch.

Agree about the delicate balance of reusing a gimmick too much and it getting cumbersome. I recently replayed Broken Sword 3 and the moving blocks puzzles got very hiring fast but that might have also been the control system and speed of them.