Notes: What is a Puzzle? - Scott Kim

Tetris

What is a Puzzle?

A solvable and fun game.


Why play a Puzzle?

• Challenge
• Distraction
• Characters
• Settings

Difficulty of Puzzles:

The puzzle must be easy to learn else it will deter the player if the game is too hard to figure out.



 Types of Puzzles?

Action:
Twitch based puzzle, mental and virtual "physical" game mechanics. For example, Tetris is an action puzzle that require the player to take in the virtual environment and objects to place each piece together.

Story(Experience):
Use the Puzzle to tell a story. Designers should link the story and puzzle so that they are relevent to each other.

Competitive:
Simple words games are a good example of competitive puzzles.

Construction(Toy):
Game mechanics that allow the player to create their own experience and goals, modularity of game objects, that they fit together to so that the player can construct freely. A good example of this is  Lego.

Conclusion 

The main points I got from the notes were to keep the puzzles relevant, for example, a puzzle could be used as an obstacles to prevent the player from progressing until it is solved or to reward the player with a piece that connects with other puzzle rewards. These are just some ways to make the puzzles relevant.