SOOZ'S PROFILE

How many pictures are you looking for?

Are you hoping to get some free work (in which case LOL) or are you planning on offering some kind of compensation?

author=Sated
It's funny how my most commented reviews tend to be the ones with negative scores, and I assume that's a trend repeated across the whole of the site. Posted within a day of each other, my glowing (and far better written) review of Homework Salesman has far less comments than my scathing review of Pom Get Wi-Fi.

People tend to not feel like they need to defend the honor of a game that gets a good review.

Thinking about this subject, I'm reminded of a rule of thumb for writing: If you're having eternal writer's block over a scene, that is probably a sign you don't need it.

I think the same can be applied to this subject. Do you really need a town? Sure, you need a place for the characters to rest, heal, get stuff. But does it need to be a town, rather than a clearing with a peddler and a campsite? Is there a purpose served by having the characters visit a permanent settlement instead of anything else?

Basically, instead of thinking that you need to put a town in because this is the part where towns go, think of what the true purpose of your "town" is, and whether that can be better served with something simpler.

Looks like it comes from AlterEgo's contrib.

I guess whoever's next can C&P the original periscope station in there?

ETA: It doesn't look like anything else was affected, fortunately.

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.