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Puzzles! Looking for feedback.

Hello, everyone. As development of my game nears completion, I find that it's becoming harder and harder for me to think of interesting puzzles.

Puzzles aren't my strong suit as it is, but I still try to fill every dungeon with a large variety of puzzles, with at least one unique one per dungeon. However, I feel that I'm running out of ideas and I would really rather not rehash puzzles that have already been seen earlier in the game.

This is why I'm reaching out to you guys for some ideas. What kind of puzzles are your favorite? What kind of puzzles do you despise? What's the consensus on riddle-based puzzles? What are some puzzles in games that you especially enjoyed?

I appreciate any feedback I recieve! If you haven't, please check out my game, Exile's Journey: it's almost done, and will contain at least 15 hours of gameplay upon it's release. Thanks!

Posts

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Hey Dethmetal!

I'm not a content creator here, but as one who generally plays games and LOVES puzzle games I figured I could give you some feedback. This game looks very promising and just epic by the way, so keep it up!

Okay, so \puzzles, I don't know what you've implemented so far, but the example of games that stick out for me for top-down 2D puzzle based challenges are the Zelda games (of course).

I don't know what you've already implemented, but having at least one puzzle sequence of "lost in the woods" with four directional choices to go and either a hint to go on, or a sequence to remember (ties in with your riddle idea, maybe? I think of sequences like the Royal Graveyard in Zelda: The Minish Cap). Puzzles based solely on guess and check though are easily frustrating though.

I think perhaps the best dungeon puzzles come from the Water Temples though because the environment itself is the puzzle. These are often mixing exploration and puzzle solving in an environment that changes (raises/lowers water levels) with each successful step in "solving the puzzle".

Also it may be very interesting to create specific enemies that are a puzzle in and of themselves. As if there were a special way to defeat it and all other attacks were rendered useless against it. However that kind of "puzzle" is good for one time only, once the player knows how to beat the monster the puzzle loses its value and can just become tedious. #BossBattles


In my opinion, stealing a puzzle idea from a Zelda game is fine so long as you can implement into your game in a way that feels natural to the world therein.

I hope this helps at all. Another game that greatly mixes environmental and enemy challenges/puzzles is Dark Souls, but it's a question of how much of that can actually be implemented.

God speed Dethmetal!
Gretgor
Having gotten my first 4/5, I must now work hard to obtain... my second 4/5.
3420
You could start by making some simple sokoban-like puzzles, but then build upon them by adding some different features, like slippery floors or something like that. Also, maybe you could make something like a minecart puzzle where certain switches control the directions of the rails, and you have to get the rails on the right position in order to make the minecarts move to where you want them to be.

Another idea would be something of a "step on every tile once" puzzle, kinda like the Sootopolis gym in Pokémon Gen 3, but with some features that make it slightly different.

As for riddle puzzles, I'd recommend to keep the riddles themselves simple.

I'd recommend playing through Lufia II for some other ideas, that game is full of great (but mostly easy) puzzles. It contains some puzzles where you have to paralyze enemy sprites in just the right position in order to move on, for instance.
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
I love riddle-based puzzles, oh so common in survival horrors.

Lufia 2 had some great puzzles too! But some of them are hard to pull off in RPG Maker 2003.

Have you tried the Befuddle Quest series here? It's filled with puzzle ideas.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I've definitely got some great ideas for puzzles that I haven't used yet from you guys.

My main influences for puzzlemaking and dungeon design is the Zelda series, but I haven't played Lufia 2 or Befuddle Quest so perhaps I'll check them out too for some extra inspiration.
Take some puzzles that function like earlier ones, but add an element that wasn't there that makes the puzzle much trickier.
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