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PUZZLE DESIGN?
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SakiPai
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SakiPai
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CloseI really need advice for setting up 'escape the room'-esque puzzles. For those that have experience designing puzzles, what's your process? How do you plan solutions and things like that? I'm trying to be clever, but I really don't know where to start.
You could try working backwards. For example to escape the room you need a key. But the key is locked in the safe. And the safe requires a passcode. And the passcode is written on a scrap of paper. But the scrap of paper is locked in a mechanism that requires you to solve a logic puzzle. And so on and so on. That's a generic example but you get the idea.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
Here's a great article on puzzle design, and I recall there are a couple of good ones in the article section on this very site. (Fake edit: Here's one!)
My own design inspiration is based on the game setting: I think about what sort of objects are around the area, and then think how they might be used. To use my current workroom as an example, there are books and bookshelves, drawers of art supplies, a cage with two guinea pigs, two computers, a printer, and various piles of clutter. Using that, I can come up with the following off the top of my head:
-Searching a book for a password or object
-A pushing puzzle with the clutter
-Moving a bookshelf to find a key item
-Using a USB drive as a key item to transfer a printable clue from one computer to another and then print it
-Using a treat to get the guinea pigs to move to obtain an item they're guarding
-Combining a ruler and something else to make a tool to retrieve an unreachable item
An exercise I recommend is to play through a game or two that you think are really great examples of the genre you're going for, and write down what each puzzle involves. It often turns out to be a lot simpler than it seems.
My own design inspiration is based on the game setting: I think about what sort of objects are around the area, and then think how they might be used. To use my current workroom as an example, there are books and bookshelves, drawers of art supplies, a cage with two guinea pigs, two computers, a printer, and various piles of clutter. Using that, I can come up with the following off the top of my head:
-Searching a book for a password or object
-A pushing puzzle with the clutter
-Moving a bookshelf to find a key item
-Using a USB drive as a key item to transfer a printable clue from one computer to another and then print it
-Using a treat to get the guinea pigs to move to obtain an item they're guarding
-Combining a ruler and something else to make a tool to retrieve an unreachable item
An exercise I recommend is to play through a game or two that you think are really great examples of the genre you're going for, and write down what each puzzle involves. It often turns out to be a lot simpler than it seems.
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