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[Fallsburg]

Hi, someone in my lab is working on tools to assist PuzzleScript development, and he's unsure of what tools might actually be desirable/useful for puzzle designers. 

Ideas are:
-Determining whether a given puzzle can be solved
-Determining what the shortest solution to a puzzle is
-Shortcut blocking (i.e. if the developer has an intended solution, not allowing for solutions that circumvent that solution)

Would any of those be useful?  Are there things not mentioned that would be much  more useful?

[SirNiko]

All three would be useful.

It might also be useful to have a tool that can recommend assets that do not change a solution so the designer can easily add red herring items/powerups.

eg, a game like The Incredible Machine where the player must solve a puzzle by dropping items from a limited selection on the board. A tool that will help a designer choose red herring items that will not change his intended solution.

[Fallsburg]

Yeah, that's a good one.  Someone in the lab did that exact thing for procedurally generated puzzles.  It would be up to the designer to  create a set of things that could show up, but shouldn't actually affect the answer, but that's not so bad.