Congratulations on finishing your game!

I'm up to... level 19, and it got a bit mentally tiring, so taking a break. So far I really like it!

Just thought I'd post to mention that I found a bug, though:

On level 18, if you do the following mirrors:

L->R Centered
UR->DL

To get this configuration:

You can jump onto the edge of the bricks and stay there (and then jump up from them if you want).

Ah very interesting..does it allow you to reach the carrot from there?

Game is done! Bump.

If you're still having file size issues, you should use Audacity to export sounds to OGG. Unity works with OGG best (mp3s can take a loonnggg time to import for some reason..)

I'm enjoying this a lot so far! If anything, you may wanna cut one or two of the earlier puzzles that feel a little redundant to me. But no big deal either way. Very polished.

Quest for Glory FTW!!!

Here it is, in Unity. Please do read the brief visual manual for an explanation of what the game is. Cheers!

http://tinyurl.com/texasrealestatetycoon

I've been thinking a lot lately about my puzzle design process and what my goals are with the game. People play through the puzzles too quickly, and they don't even get what's going on half the time. That's not very satisfying game play, so I'm currently trying to design more difficult puzzles that you can just brute-force or stumble around for solutions.

Anyhoo, I think a good puzzle doesn't intentionally mislead, but rather suggests something that causes you to form the wrong conclusions. For example, there's a door high up, and three crates in the corner. Rather than stacking them to reach the door, you open them to see there's a jetpack inside one of them.

That suggestion give you the "Aha!" moment when you see the solution's not the 'obvious' one after all. At least, that's my idea of it.

Yeah, that's pretty much my theory right now on how to achieve the "Aha!" moment. Playing through Braid again, and you see this misdirection all over the place. The game nudges you in subtle ways (and sometimes not so subtle) towards the wrong approach, and you often need to reject your initial instincts to find the true solution. If a game can make you do that, that's pretty damn cool!

And, I'll post this link again cuz I think it's really relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_fixedness

@King Hadas: I do agree, player expectation has a lot to do with it. When I play a Sierra Online adventure game..I kind of know what to expect in terms of "fairness." But a LucasArts adventure game, if that had a "deadend" path, I would be furious! So you're right, your intended audience and what they expect (and what you make them expect) is a huge factor.

@Azure: I'm a little confused by your post, but I'll say: If the other 5 crates were there because otherwise the puzzle would be too easy, then I would say you don't have sufficiently interesting mechanics! And yet I completely agree with the second half of your post about using things non-obviously..again, confused by how you wrote it I do want to say, however, that I am just stating my personal preferences, and I don't mean to try and find "the right way" to design puzzles. But, it is very enlightening indeed to discuss the different _styles_ of puzzles that exist in games, so thanks to everyone for posting!

@SirNiko: I will check out Deadly Rooms - it sounds like my kind of puzzle game! And yes, the game in question is Moments of Reflection. If you could play the build (http://mor-game.com) and give me some feedback, that'd be much appreciated. Just two days ago I uploaded a new build with drastically different level order and some tweaked puzzles intended to mislead, so I'm curious to hear how it plays now.

I totally agree that obvious actions should not lead to the solution. And a lot of puzzle games do suffer from this, where you go in, push some random stuff, and suddenly you're done. "Umm..I have no idea what I did..but OK." That's the problem my game is suffering from right now, and I'm taking steps to fix it.

But I disagree that adding extraneous elements is the only way to solve this. You can design the puzzle in a way such that obvious - but incorrect - actions are the first thing that most players will try. So they mislead _themselves naturally_. Many puzzles in Braid have this property, some much more than others. You go forth, doing the obvious thing, and then realize that the obvious thing is wrong, and reconsider things (this is when you think).

Maybe it's just personal preference, but I think this sort of more passive misdirection is more fair.

I don't really understand your example with the maze, if you want to clarify?

Another rule of thumb I discovered to evaluate certain qualities is this:

Trial and error is necessary but if just "random trial and error" is the only thing practically sufficient to solve a puzzle-game then it cannot be interesting. There simply aren't that many possibilities to go wrong.

If the puzzle-game requires "directed trial and error" then it is rather interesting since the number of all possible attempts is simply too high to be checked out. What it means is
that you do apply trial and error, but following an approximate idea you have in mind.
That way you are quickly narrowing down the potential solution-candidates until you find one that works.

Truth. The possibility space needs to be large enough so random trial and error, or "brute force", is too expensive and thus players won't do it. That is the worst way to play a puzzle game, and if that's what players do in your game, you have failed.

I think the best way to approach this (or at least one I'd have in my games) is to have only necessary elements, but make the puzzle about the order in which you access them.

If you go for instant gratification, like "wow, this level is easy, all I have to do is pick up this powerup", you'll find the puzzle to be unsolvable because of some negative side effect from the powerup. Meanwhile the other powerups, which aren't as easily reachable, let you modify the level so that the first powerup's negative effect doesn't matter.

And for the puzzle to feel fair, you'd probably have to have presented all the effects earlier in the game, and only subvert some of the unspoken assumptions now (like "powerups are always helpful").

Very well put. I've been thinking a lot about this, and I think I totally agree with you. Unspoken assumptions are a powerful thing, and I think it is the role of a good puzzle to force the player to rethink those assumptions. In psychology, it's called "Functional fixedness": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_fixedness

So my current theory is: You design the puzzle in a way that lures the player to make those same assumptions again. Encourage them to take the dumbest approach - it should be the first thing they try. Then, they should see why it doesn't work, and this forces them to think. And forcing them to think, in my opinion, is success for a puzzle game.

For example, if your puzzle game is about getting to a goal, players will probably always take the first step that gets them physically closer to the goal. So exploit this tendency and make sure that getting physically closer is _not_ the correct first step.

But, I do think you should lure them with design rather than red herrings that have nothing to do with the puzzle. But then again, that's my opinion for my game, and maybe someone out there is designing a game all about red herrings

I live in SF, and I'd definitely come to these. Most of the gamedev meetups I've been to in the city don't really focus on either getting stuff done, or showing stuff off. Something like what you're proposing would be a lot more substantial and useful.

I feel exactly the same way. Most of them are about networking and getting jobs (which is fine, just not for me anymore)

It's about whether the player finds the solution to a problem to be "by the rules of the game."

The test: if when a player discovers a solution, doesn't feel cheated, then you're okay.

Is it reasonable that the player sees the "dead ends" as a part of the puzzle? How do you expect them to see them?

You can train the player to see anything as anything. You just have to do that.

Very well put. But could you clarify your sentence about "dead ends"? I'm not sure if you're asking me the question or if it's another question I should ask myself

Sometimes in puzzle games, a level will contain items that are superfluous, or simply present things in a way that is misleading. For example, in many puzzles of Closure, there are some light orbs that are simply not necessary (and I doubt I'm just finding obscure solutions). Some levels in Portal 1/2 require you to go against your survival instincts and jump off great heights.

Now, the purist in me thinks, "This is bad design. You should not obscure the solution and in fact guide the player towards it!" But then, do you rob players of that "AHA!" moment if you don't mislead them a bit? The one extreme is to simply tell them the solution - that's totally not misleading. So obviously you can't go too far in that extreme. But going too far in the other extreme seems bad as well, since you just end up wasting the player's time with distractions. Is this just one of those things you need to find a balance for, with no right answers?