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DUNGEON PUZZLES
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CloseI am clueless when it comes to dungeon puzzles. I don't want GS/Lufia 2-esque complexity, but I don't want half-assed stuff like Neo mentioned (...which half-included Lufia 2, which was half-half-assed). Half.
<Craze> welp switches?
<Craze> welp switches?
Bottom line:
If you quit an RPG Maker game because it includes an ice or switch puzzle, you have far bigger issues. :)
If you quit an RPG Maker game because it includes an ice or switch puzzle, you have far bigger issues. :)
Switch puzzles is hell. They are hard and no fun. Don't do that.
That reminded me of another good reference for puzzles:
http://rpgmaker.net/games/1843/
Not all of them, though (see review!)
That reminded me of another good reference for puzzles:
http://rpgmaker.net/games/1843/
Not all of them, though (see review!)
Neophyte
155
I guess I like those games because they at least require a little bit of experimentation and sometimes even skill. When I run into games that copy and paste an ice sliding puzzle, it's one of those "ugh, another one of these" moments. No experimentation is involved. The games I mentioned give you quirky tools and spells to use in the environment. They give off cues when the thing you tried to experiment with doesn't work (like in Lufia 2, your sword makes a little ding sound when it's ineffective).
Here is a tier of how I would categorize things.
Really bad pull your hair out I fucking hate you puzzle:
A decent puzzle with a clever twist:
What I was talking about in my previous post (aka the best):
Notice how the interactions get shorter each time? They're kind of like battles, nobody wants to be in one for too long. The shorter they are, the better!
Usually.
Here is a tier of how I would categorize things.
Really bad pull your hair out I fucking hate you puzzle:
A decent puzzle with a clever twist:
What I was talking about in my previous post (aka the best):
Notice how the interactions get shorter each time? They're kind of like battles, nobody wants to be in one for too long. The shorter they are, the better!
Usually.
This is just my personal opinion; puzzles in games make me want to blow my brains out. Alundra had the right idea, but its puzzles were designed by an austistic person or something because they were so obtuse and difficult. As stated before, it's almost impossible to beat that without a walkthrough.
Wild Arms's puzzles are tolerable because of the clever way it uses skills between characters to incorporate solving them; but then its sometimes irritating, especially in WA2 where the god awful translation sometimes prevented the player from ever finding out exactly what he's supposed to even do, sort of how it might feel to take a test in a foreign language with a translator who's only working knowledge of said language is failing it in high school.
Wild Arms's puzzles are tolerable because of the clever way it uses skills between characters to incorporate solving them; but then its sometimes irritating, especially in WA2 where the god awful translation sometimes prevented the player from ever finding out exactly what he's supposed to even do, sort of how it might feel to take a test in a foreign language with a translator who's only working knowledge of said language is failing it in high school.
Well... I like these puzzles in reverse order. The last one looks too complicated. You said the shorter the better, but that one is clearly the longer one.
The second one is fine, a bit too simple.
The first one is my favorite. I like that kind of puzzle. There's a game here in RMN exlusively for this type of puzzle:
http://rpgmaker.net/games/1910/
---edit---
About what Feld said:
Indeed, not everyone likes puzzles, and if your RPG game is not heavily puzzle oriented (like Lufia, Zelda), be careful with them... make sure they're either optional or easy.
The second one is fine, a bit too simple.
The first one is my favorite. I like that kind of puzzle. There's a game here in RMN exlusively for this type of puzzle:
http://rpgmaker.net/games/1910/
---edit---
About what Feld said:
Indeed, not everyone likes puzzles, and if your RPG game is not heavily puzzle oriented (like Lufia, Zelda), be careful with them... make sure they're either optional or easy.
About the last youtube thing you posted, unless there's something I'm missing, then that big log pushing/crate dropping puzzle until 2:35 on the boat was entirely worthless because redhead just tells you "I dunno what we'll do with this rock" and that's all. You also find a crate with nothing in it. I'd be raging if I had to go through all that for nothing. I'm glad I didn't play that.
I generally tend to hate puzzles. Give me short minigames that are fun and don't require you to know exactly what the developer was thinking (Oh yeah you had to hit the blue clock with the red key while the time was 11:43 PM on the green clock after you talked to the butler while the maid was away, but only when it's Salamando day, with the only hint of "The green goes to red after blue").
Sometimes I just can't figure something out until I go to a walkthrough because I don't know how the games logic works. You think you can't get by a soldier and try all these things when you realize after reading the walkthrough that the soldier has a sight range of 1 so you could walk right by him as long as you aren't directly 1 space in front of him.
I generally tend to hate puzzles. Give me short minigames that are fun and don't require you to know exactly what the developer was thinking (Oh yeah you had to hit the blue clock with the red key while the time was 11:43 PM on the green clock after you talked to the butler while the maid was away, but only when it's Salamando day, with the only hint of "The green goes to red after blue").
Sometimes I just can't figure something out until I go to a walkthrough because I don't know how the games logic works. You think you can't get by a soldier and try all these things when you realize after reading the walkthrough that the soldier has a sight range of 1 so you could walk right by him as long as you aren't directly 1 space in front of him.
Neophyte
155
post=134076
Well... I like these puzzles in reverse order. The last one looks too complicated. You said the shorter the better, but that one is clearly the longer one.
Nooooo. The interactions are still shorter. If you're looking at the thing as a whole, then yeah sure it's longer. But you aren't doing the same exact thing for over 2 minutes like in the first video. You're moving around and sometimes there is some dialogue showing that you are at least making progress.
I guess you guys like that first one because it has 4 TREASURE CHESTS, which gives you incentive. And I don't disagree with that. But seriously, fuck that puzzle. It is infinitely times harder without a walkthrough than the third video I posted.
Yeah that first puzzle looks awful. Doing absolutely nothing but moving around blocks for almost 3 minutes? Pass.
Outlaw City had what I thought were really bad puzzles, but I appreciated the fact that the creators tried. Also, they were skippable, which I appreciated even more.
(If anyone cares I could try to get into why I thought they were bad, maybe, but no promises.)
Nevermind, this is why:
Re: Middle YouTube Video:
This is actually a decent puzzle but I can think of far more clever, NPC-based uses of Mind Reading in a game. And it is kind of silly because statues don't have minds. I'd rather use it to get dirt on NPCs to blackmail them about. That would make a fun puzzle.
I wish more games had a Mind Reading feature! What a neat idea!
Edit 2: I fucking hate all sliding block puzzles. Fuck them forever. They almost immediately cause me to feel despair and frustration.
Nevermind, this is why:
(Oh yeah you had to hit the blue clock with the red key while the time was 11:43 PM on the green clock after you talked to the butler while the maid was away, but only when it's Salamando day, with the only hint of "The green goes to red after blue").
Re: Middle YouTube Video:
This is actually a decent puzzle but I can think of far more clever, NPC-based uses of Mind Reading in a game. And it is kind of silly because statues don't have minds. I'd rather use it to get dirt on NPCs to blackmail them about. That would make a fun puzzle.
I wish more games had a Mind Reading feature! What a neat idea!
Edit 2: I fucking hate all sliding block puzzles. Fuck them forever. They almost immediately cause me to feel despair and frustration.
I like that Golden Sun puzzle with the statues, but is there any indication given beforehand that you can read their minds? Who would think to cast mind read on an inanimate object? It seems like one of those annoying adventure game situations where you have to endlessly rub spells and items together until you stumble on the one that works, which is bad puzzle design IMO.
EnderX
562
Haven't played Lufia II to completion (there was another puzzle where I could never get the timing right), but that example can't be the worst. It's basically a variant of a game on Microsoft's old Game Packs called Klotski, and I'm fairly sure it can be solved in something like half that time - maybe two thirds if I'm misunderstanding how long ingame interactions take.
Neophyte
155
post=134110
I like that Golden Sun puzzle with the statues, but is there any indication given beforehand that you can read their minds? Who would think to cast mind read on an inanimate object? It seems like one of those annoying adventure game situations where you have to endlessly rub spells and items together until you stumble on the one that works, which is bad puzzle design IMO.
It's the last dungeon in the game. And the game is like Zelda, you get these abilities one at a time and you learn their mechanics. You mind read inanimate objects all the time in the game. There's a whole part of the story that tells you how and why you can do this.
The games I mentioned have a bone structure in which they can build up their design. You constantly use these skills and learn their use, whereas in other RPGs you just run into a switch or riddle puzzle. There's nothing to learn, you can't apply what you learned in the last puzzle with something further down the road. That's bad design. It's disjointed, clumsy, and doesn't work. If every other mechanic of your game has some sort of progression (leveling up, learning new skills, etc), there's no reason why you can't apply that to this as well.
That's why that Lufia one is bad. It throws everything you learned out the window. But I'm pretty sure they just wanted you to kill yourself when trying to solve that.
ferris95
50
The towers in pokemon where you had to avoid those cracks in the floor were nail-bittingly hard.
post=134039
I luuuuuurve puzzles, of all kinds - block pushing, flicking switches, grappling hooks, all that stuff. They don't have to be super-hard but it adds so much to a game to have something to do besides battling. Although there's a tricky balance between "give the player something to do" and "waste the player's time to pad out the length". I reckon the biggest danger is the backtracking and repetition that comes with many kinds of puzzles, so maybe the best approach is little-and-often. I liked in Soul Reaver 2 how basically the whole dungeon was one big puzzle and you just did little bits of it as you went along, especially in the light tomb. Definitely a lot more interesting than just "oh, someone left a block right next to this switch for no good reason". That's a bit tricky for most game makers though!
EDIT: Great call, Neophyte! If you're going to do puzzles (especially manipulating-your-environment puzzles) they should be everywhere. I loved getting out of a dungeon in Zelda and running around robbing people's houses with the new tool I'd just got.
Minish cap did that phenomenally well. :D
At any rate? I love the "Simple puzzles" get a rock ont a block, ice sliding, step on every tile and end at the door, switch puzzles, water raising..
in fact I used water raising and rock push puzzles in my own little demo game, which I might make into a Puzzle and minigame only game. XD I have a pacman type game, snake type game, 3 boulder slide puzzles, and a water level raise/lower dungeon. I plan to design more and more complex puzzles as I learn to map better. But for now, I'm focusing on Touhou RPG! (which of course, will lack any kind of puzzle, just be keyboard-smashingly difficult and have excellent replay value. XD)
Funny, but my copy of Lufia II didn't have that puzzle in it. And I've finished that game umpteenth amount of times. Perhaps they cut it out of the PAL version because it doesn't fit the game at all? That or it's in an area I've never found before. Where's it located?
Nevermind. Gamfaqs knows all. I forgot about that wall. Time to play again. ^.^
Nevermind. Gamfaqs knows all. I forgot about that wall. Time to play again. ^.^
