Puzzle Solving... or Problem Solving? | Game Maker's Toolkit

Hi, this is Mark Brown with Game Maker's Toolkit,
a series on video game design.

Infinifactory is one of the funniest games
I've played this year. Which is pretty impressive,

considering that the fact that it's not really a comedy game.

To get the joke, you need to know how the
game works. In each level, you must fabricate

some complicated structure - like this 5-piece
cross thing - by building a production line

that transports and manipulates blocks that
plop out of a hole in the wall.

You build your machine with chunky cubic blocks
like conveyor belts, pushers, optical sensors,

rotators, and welders.

After spending an hour carefully building
a machine to forge that 5-piece cross,

I finally got it to work...

But, Infinifactory wants you to
make ten perfect copies of the structure,

to prove that your machine is actually a functioning
production line.

So, I let the machine run a few more times,
confident that it would spit out nine more

perfect crosses, and then this happened...

The sheer absurdity of it. The insane comic
timing. The slack-jawed disbelief of how stupidly

crap my monstrously complicated machine was.
It had me doubled over in stitches, laughing

at it. It was either that, or cry.

The opportunity for impromptu comedy is not
the only thing that sets the games of Zach

Barth apart from other puzzlers.

In fact, they feel so fundamentally different,
that to put a game like Infinifactory in the

same "puzzle" genre as games such as The Talos
Principle and Snakebird might be doing it

a great disservice.

Because when you play Portal, you're trying
to discover the solution to the puzzle.

Whereas in Infinifactory, you are literally
inventing a solution. And the use of "the

and "a" in that sentence is important because

typical puzzle games have just one answer.
Maybe there's a couple alternative solutions,

or you could tweak the main answer slightly,
or there's a solution that the developer never

intended. But in Infinifactory, the possible
solutions are... Infinite. Well, sort of.

There's a lot of them, at least.

Which is shown very clearly in these end-of-level
histograms, that show you how efficient your

solution is compared to every other player
on Steam - in both your use of time and space.

That also sets Barth's games apart from other
puzzlers - it's practically pointless to play

the same puzzle twice in The Swapper

but it's genuinely enjoyable to return to
a completed Infinifactory puzzle and try to

make your solution more productive.

So maybe we should stop saying these games
are about solving puzzles, and say they're

actually about solving problems. These are
games where you have a goal, some materials,

a limited work space, and some tools. Your
job is to reach that goal - in any way you

can.

That is why these games feel less like unravelling
contrived riddles, and more like solving real-world

problems - like making production lines in
Infinifactory, plotting efficient train lines

in Mini Metro, making spaceships in Kerbal
Space Program,

or writing code in Spacechem.

Yeah, Spacechem has actually got way more to
do with coding than chemistry - right down

to the logic gates and subroutines and debugging.

And that's cool, for two reasons. One: programming
is basically the best puzzle game in the world,

because it's truly open-ended and it's wonderfully
satisfying to dream up, jot down, iterate

upon, and execute some totally unique solution
to the overwhelmingly complex problem at hand.

And two: it means the game, and those like
it, can be truly educational, without being

"educational games". SpaceChem was actually
used in a few schools in the UK, according to the

trade association, TIGA.

Similarly, Minecraft's redstone - a mineral
that lets player wire up mechanised contraptions

- is introducing tonnes of players to simple
coding. Or, not so simple. Minecrafters have

used redstone to make a calculator, a GPU
that can draw shapes, and an 8-track sequencer

that can belt out Pachelbel's Canon in D.

By the way, Zach Barth also made the blocky,
competitive mining game Infiniminer that would

directly influence Minecraft so he probably
dies a little inside every time you say that

Infinifactory controls like Minecraft. Just
a heads up.

His other games, if you want to search them
out, are also notable problem-solvers.

That includes games like The Codex of Alchemical
Engineering, which is about programming commands

into rotating arms to transfer imaginary minerals.
Bureau of Steam Engineering, which is about

connecting up boilers to steam-powered weapons
on a robot. And KOHCTPYKTOP: Engineer of the

People, which is an almost impenetrable game
about designing integrated circuits to meet

specifications.

And in the new game from his studio Zachtronics,
which is called TIS-100, you literally write

simple assembly code into these blocks to
manipulate data. You're even encouraged to

print out a PDF reference manual with all
the commands and instructions that you need.

This seems to be part of a trend of programmers
making games about programming. In 2DBoy's

next game, Human Resource Machine, you write
commands for office workers so they can automatically

complete jobs. And in Quadrilateral Cowboy,
by Blendo Games, you write commands into a

DOS-like interface to shut off alarms and
unlock doors so you can break into highly

secure buildings.

The point is that if you play any of these
games, you'll clearly see that by taking inspiration

from real-world problems, like programming
or engineering games like Spacechem and World

of Goo can actually be more fun than those
built from arbitrary puzzles.

You get the satisfaction of making something
work (and the comedy of making something that

doesn't). The same problems can be played multiple times as you try to make a more efficient solution

And it might be easier to make the levels
themselves. In a postmortem on Spacechem,

Barth revealed that his puzzle creation process
was essentially to throw together interesting

inputs and outputs, make sure the puzzle can
be solved, and then reorder all the levels

based on difficulty.

Don't take this as me saying that I want to
bin traditional puzzle games.

The Witness, for example, is one of my most anticipated
games at the moments. Take it more as a friendly

reminder that this is still a small, burgeoning
group of games and there are still loads of

real-world problems to take inspiration from
in your new, open-ended, problem solving game.

Thanks for watching! Let me know your favourite
problem-solving puzzler in the comments. Also,

please like the episode, consider kicking
in a few bucks a show on Patreon, and if you

want to know the second a new episode is out,
subscribe to the channel on YouTube.