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[maiscrudo]

Hi guys!
I've reached a point in development where I'm doubting my original plan is adequate to my game anymore and I'd like to have a discussion with you about it.

The development process of my game started with a toy prototype, where I established the basic controls and game mechanics and created some levels (that later became the puzzle rooms).

Then came the game design process: what I wanted to achieve was a game with minimalistic artwork, where you had to escape from enemies, like N+, with time manipulation, like super-hot, and I wanted it to have rogue-like elements with a lot of collectable items.
My main goal was to have a game that could play differently every time, like Binding of Isaac for example.

The current state of the game is that I'm struggling to add the "Binding of Isaac" part to the mix.
The game is made of levels composed of different rooms, randomly selected from a pool, and each room can be of different types: arena (just enemies to avoid, some are procedurally generated), puzzle (designed room with barriers and switches, where some logic is needed to exit), treasure (where you find an item), shop, boss and empty. The rooms are linked previous to the following: I tried to layout them as a map with multiple connections between rooms but it felt too dispersive and it didn't work well with puzzle rooms that can only have one entry and one exit.

I like puzzle rooms the most and I already created a fairly amount of them, but they are the main concern for the kind of game I want to make:
- they need to be ordered by difficulty, therefore in the first levels for example only a small percentage of the total will be available
- they are very recognizable
I think after a while the player will always have the same puzzle rooms to solve and be bored: partial solution to this is creating an overwhelming amount of different puzzle rooms, but in any case it's finite number.
Procedurally generating a puzzle room is not an option.
On the other hand I think that having only arena rooms could be equally boring after a while.

I'm banging my head trying to make designed rooms fit in a rogue-like game.
Does this even make sense?

[PaulWv2.017]

The main question is, what's a puzzle room?

A numeric or ordered puzzle such as color order or trigger order puzzle should be easy to make procedural. (You may also want to include an object that provides a key elsewhere in the level).
Block move puzzles are more difficult, but they can be made procedurally.

If you want to make very specific and specialized puzzles, tweak your procedurally generation so you only have a one chance to put them in the world ever so that they rarely occur.

[maiscrudo]

Actually I haven't told you what's the goal of a player in a room..
Every room has an exit portal, that leads to the next room: it can be open or closed.
If it's open the player can use it immediately by going over it: empty, shop and treasure rooms all have open portals.
If it's closed the player needs to collect all the portal keys in the room in order to open it.
These portal keys can be randomly placed in the room or can be placed in precise spots by the room designer.

A puzzle room for example has portal keys placed in a way that the player has to think before he can act: maybe it requires timing, or logic, etc..
In puzzle rooms the room itself can get smaller when the player moves, or a portal key can be invisible and can be located through sound, or there are switches to flip in a particular order.
It's a custom room in other words.

If you want to make very specific and specialized puzzles, tweak your procedurally generation so you only have a one chance to put them in the world ever so that they rarely occur.

This is very interesting and made me think that puzzle rooms can as well be boss rooms!
A level has only one boss room, and there are only 8 levels.. so I don't need a huge amount to begin with.
Moreover a boss room is typically always the same even in some rogue-likes (I'm thinking Binding of Isaac here).
Maybe I could use the easier ones as treasure rooms and the more difficult ones as boss rooms.

[PaulWv2.017]

A puzzle room for example has portal keys placed in a way that the player has to think before he can act: maybe it requires timing, or logic, etc..
In puzzle rooms the room itself can get smaller when the player moves, or a portal key can be invisible and can be located through sound, or there are switches to flip in a particular order.
It's a custom room in other words.

I'm not sure I understand why you can't randomly generate and place any of those three options. Even if you want to make a maze inside the room, that is not terribly difficult to define. Are you running up against engine limitations or just a bit of inexperience and not sure where to start?

[valrus]

Are these the sort of puzzle that, if the details and orders were changed a bit, would still be fun the second and third and tenth time you do them?  Or are they the "aha" kind of puzzles that aren't really fun once you know the trick?

If the former, yeah, look into procedurally generating them.  (It's often hard to do well, but don't close off an avenue of investigation until you've tried it.)

If the latter, I say "bite the bullet and make a play-once puzzle dungeon game", since by your own judgment the puzzles are the best part.  Don't make the best part the worst part by wearing out its welcome.  Maybe think of it like splitting the incompatible halves of your game into two game modes, the handcrafted, more puzzly mode you're making now and the procedural mode you want to make next.

[maiscrudo]

I'm reviewing my current puzzle rooms, they're 22 as I write, so not a huge amount.

I'm not sure I understand why you can't randomly generate and place any of those three options.

Are these the sort of puzzle that, if the details and orders were changed a bit, would still be fun the second and third and tenth time you do them?  Or are they the "aha" kind of puzzles that aren't really fun once you know the trick?

It's not that they can't be randomly generated.. they probably can and some of them partially already are. At the moment I have only 1 or 2 "aha" kind of puzzles, but I plan to add more.
The issue I see is that 10 randomly generated rooms from the same model with the same mechanic or the same layout won't differ from one another that much, their solution will be very recognizable. Maybe it'll keep the player entertained for the second or third time, but he'll eventually grow tired when he encounters it for the tenth time.
Not all puzzle rooms are like that, but the more a puzzle room is "handcrafted", requiring timing or logic or both, the less random generation is effective to lengthen its replay value.

For example the puzzle room with the hidden portal key randomly generates its position, but when you encounter it the second time you already know you have to listen to the sonar sound to locate it (ok maybe this is an "aha" kind of puzzle). Imagine when you do that 10 times.
You may think: "maybe you should remove a room that has low replay value and concentrate on creating rooms that have high replay value".. and you would be right, I guess.
This is true for more than 50% of the current puzzle rooms.

Maybe I should keep LRV puzzle rooms as boss rooms or treasure rooms, so the player sees them less frequently.

[PaulWv2.017]

The issue I see is that 10 randomly generated rooms from the same model with the same mechanic or the same layout won't differ from one another that much, their solution will be very recognizable. Maybe it'll keep the player entertained for the second or third time, but he'll eventually grow tired when he encounters it for the tenth time.
[...]
Maybe I should keep LRV puzzle rooms as boss rooms or treasure rooms, so the player sees them less frequently.

Ah, I see. Yeah, you'll kind of have to figure how many times you expect the average player to replay and then figure how many times you can get away with showing the same specific design, just like with enemy types and tilesets and such as.

[valrus]

If you haven't already played it, I'd suggest having a go through Lufia II, which mixes a classic RPG with lots of good puzzle rooms with a 99-level roguelike Ancient Cave.  They're part of the same world, like the Ancient Cave is a location within the static RPG world, but your progress in between them is mostly separate; you restart at Level 1 with an empty inventory when entering, and you lose your acquired levels and inventory when leaving.

That could give you a way to mix handcrafted content with additional procedural content for expert replay.

[maiscrudo]

If you haven't already played it, I'd suggest having a go through Lufia II, which mixes a classic RPG with lots of good puzzle rooms with a 99-level roguelike Ancient Cave.
[..]

That could give you a way to mix handcrafted content with additional procedural content for expert replay.

Thanks for the tip!
I haven't played it yet but I found a longplay (6 hours for the first part..) on youtube and I'll be studying it as soon as possible!