Point and Click Puzzle Design | How to Design Puzzles

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

A few months back I played Broken Age - the
point and click adventure from Double Fine

that raised 3 million bucks on Kickstarter,
and became so bloated that it was released

in two halves, almost a year apart.

I generally enjoyed Broken Age's first half.
It's funny and charming, and I liked both

of the main characters. There's Vella, who
is an unwilling sacrificial offering to a

monster. And Shay, who wants to break free
of his mollycoddling parents.

But when the second half came out earlier
this year, I started to find puzzles that

had some seriously troubling design.

Like the puzzle where this grabby hand is
obsessed with boots:

VELLA: Wow! It really seems to like boots.

But doesn't seem to care about Vella's shoes:

VELLA: It doesn't seem interested in me, or my clothing.

Or the one where these girls say they need
food, but Vella just won't give them this

taco pill:

VELLA: I don't wanna touch that pill until I know
what it is. Could be space poison.

Or the puzzle that you solve by doing absolutely
nothing, or this baffling knot puzzle that's

more like a Rorschach test.

And then there's the puzzle that almost made
me quit me the game for good.

There's this bit where Vella needs to figure
out the right pattern to sew into this space

scarf. But the correct solution is not somewhere
else on the spaceship.

It's not in Vella's story at all - it's actually hidden

deep within Shay's story.

That's despite the fact that in act one, there
are zero puzzles that rely on information

gleaned from the other kid's story. And despite
the fact that you're never told to expect

such puzzles in act two. And despite the fact
that these two kids don't know each other

and can't communicate with one another in
any way.

Its unfair, unreasonable, and - I say - poorly
designed.

Which is par for the course with point and
click adventures, right? These games are filled

with pixel hunting and moon logic and impossible
conundrums.

Like the notorious puzzle in Gabriel Knight
3 where you have to use masking tape and maple

syrup to turn cat hair into a fake moustache,
so you can impersonate a guy who doesn't even

have a moustache. You have to draw some facial
hair on his stolen passport with a marker pen.

Yes, point and click adventures had stuff
like. Stuff that was indefensibly dumb. But

I don't think a few bad apples should doom
an entire genre.

Especially a genre that has given us
some of the best stories in gaming history,

and definitely some of the best jokes. A genre
that moves at a different pace to many others,

and offers more grounded, Macgyver-style puzzles
than the sort of abstract fare you find in

a game like Portal or Antichamber.

So, instead of always beating on stupid point
and click puzzles - which would be easy, because

there are a LOT of them - let's look at some
golden rules that can be used to make a good,

responsibly-designed puzzle. Maybe we can
help save this genre from the scrap heap.

Rule one is to provide clear goals.

Before you even get to the puzzles, players
need to know what they're doing. They should

always know what their short and long term
goals are, so they know which puzzles to solve,

and have the motivation to do so.

In bonkers comedy Day of the Tentacle, for
example, we know that our long term goal is

to get stranded time travelers Laverne and
Hoagie back to Bernard's time in the present.

BERNARD: Well, hurry up and bring them back.

DR. FRED: I will, as soon as I get a new diamond. Then
all your buddies have to do is plug in their

respective chrono-johns and...

BERNARD: Plug them in?!

Which means Laverne needs to get into the
basement

LAVERNE: I can see Doctor Fred's old lab, and his generator is still there. Gee I could really use that

power.

And we know this means getting into that grandfather
clock and past that purple tentacle, which

is our new short term goal.

This might seem obvious, but you'd be surprised
how many adventure games mess this up and

leave players directionless, trying to solve
puzzles for no good reason.

LucasArts would often give multiple goals
at the same time, so players can go work on

something else if they get stuck on one of
the puzzles.

MAUREEN: The front forks are wasted so you'll have
to get some new ones. And someone stole my

welding torch. And last but not least, I patched
up your ruptured gas tank but you're out of

fuel and I don't have any.

BLUE TENTACLE: Entrants will be judged in three categories: best smile, best hair, and best laugh.

SOPHIA: You'll need all three stones if you want to
find Atlantis.

BEN: Where am I supposed to find all this stuff?
MAUREEN: You can hack it, tough guy.

Rule two is signposting.

Once a player starts working on a puzzle,
the single most important thing an adventure

can do is provide clear signposting.

Anybody who says that adventure games are about
trying to guess what's in the designer's brain,

obviously isn't paying attention. The best
point and clicks are littered with clues that

tell you what to do, often by looking at objects
or talking to characters.

So in Day of the Tentacle, if we talk to this
purple tentacle we get a nice clue that tells

us how to bypass him.

'TACHE TENTACLE: But no one gets to this clock while I'm here. And unless I have to go chase down some

escaped humans, I'm glued to this spot.

And if we chat to the guard looking after
the human prisoners, he says:

GUARD TENTACLE: What are you doing for dinner? How about Club Tentacle? Ah, what am I saying, I can't afford

to take out the trash let alone a classy babe
like you.

So, maybe we should try to win the human contest,
then.

'TACHE TENTACLE: Why, the grand prize is dinner for two at Club Tentacle.

Signposting is like providing lots of little,
subtle goals for those who are listening and

looking carefully.

Too subtle and the clue can be missed, of
course. Too obvious and the player feels cheated.

But get it just right, and the player is set
up for that all-important 'a-ha!' moment.

That rush of blood to the brain when you
have a lead, and can start figuring stuff out.

Poor signposting leaves players not understanding
the point of the puzzle. When Manny looks

at this pneumatic message tube, he just says:

MANNY: It's locked.

Which might make you think you need a key
or to break the lock, when actually the solution

is to slide a card into this slot.

Trust me, even the most stupid puzzles, like
one about how it always rains whenever you

wash a car, can be saved with good signposting.

BERNARD: Some people think that washing one's vehicle will make it rain.

THIEF: Oh?
BERNARD: Uh huh.

THIEF: How about that?

Rule three is feedback.

A puzzle should help solve itself, letting
you know if you're on the right track and

rebuffing you if you're not.

If you try to do something that makes some
logical sense, it's utterly infuriating to

hear some generic line like

GABRIEL KNIGHT: Nope, those don't work together.

MANNY: I don't really wanna do that

So, instead, the player should get a explanation
of why that specific combination is flawed,

and hopefully a small nudge towards the real
solution.

LAVERNE: Stop chattering mummy.

LAVERNE: The judges will think you're chewing gum. Oh this will never work.

Follow those three golden rules and you should
end up with good puzzles. Puzzles where the

player knows what they need to do, and has
a good idea of how to solve it, and is helped

to come to the right answer.

Puzzles that, if you look them up, make you
say "oh, I should have figured that out" and

not "are you kidding me?!" Puzzles that feel
fair, and don't send the player rushing to

GameFAQs or the LucasArts hint line.

Of course, elevating a puzzle from good to
great is where the real creativity comes in.

Play Day of the Tentacle when that promised
remastered version comes out, and solve the

brilliant time-traveling puzzles that make
use of the three characters being spread across

400 years of history to see how it's done.

Tentacle is not perfect, of course. It requires
some real-world knowledge that not all players

have, it's got a tiny bit of pixel hunting,
and if you don't listen carefully you'll miss

the signposting altogether and can't always
hear it a second time.

But if LucasArts was making it today (or,
making any games today), there are lots of

modern conveniences that it could use to make
the experience even more palatable.

Many games today let you highlight all interactive
objects to avoid pixel hunting. Telltale's

early games have characters spill hints if
you fail to solve a puzzle in a certain amount

of time. Sci-fi noir Gemini Rue has multiple
solutions to some puzzles and robot odyssey

Machinarium gives away the answer, but only
if you can finish a mini game.

While many blame the death of the adventure
game on these harebrained puzzles, others

have claimed that it was the genre's inability
to evolve. 3D graphics only made the games

more clunky, and the addition of extra mechanics
was rarely successful. They just couldn't

keep pace with other genres, critics say.

But I think there's lots of room for innovation,
and reason to return to this genre. Adventure

game revivalist Wadjet Eye has games like
Resonance that turn your memories into inventory

objects, and Technobabylon which lets you
talk to electrical objects while you're in

a cyber trance.

And even before the genre kicked the bucket,
games like The Last Express toyed with real-time

adventuring, and Blade Runner encouraged multiple
playthroughs by randomly picking which characters

would be a replicant.

So there's plenty more for this genre to do,
and I for one hope it lives on. But it does

need smarter, more player-friendly design
to shake off that stigma of being the genre

of cat hair moustaches and nuisance goats.
Until then, it might never come back in any

meaningful way. And I think that would be a shame.

Thanks for watching! What's the worst puzzle
you've ever come across in a game? Tell us

why it sucked so bad in the comments down below.
Also, please like the episode, subscribe on

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