Week 5 -Puzzle Design
During this workshop we looked at developing puzzles as well as the fundamentals of what creates a puzzle.
A lot of puzzles that are present within games are usually reminiscent of puzzle toys especially toys like the classic sliding title puzzles and rotation puzzles.
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The 3 elements of puzzles
- There are 3 elements to a puzzle that are used to create perfect puzzles that work well
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- The subjects of the puzzle (e.g. people, colours etc.)
- The facts (e.g. this person cant do this thing)
- The clues that help the player figure out the facts (e.g. a room is this size)
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How will the player receive clues?
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- How often
- source
- Written, spoken or observed
- Can we trust the source of the clues
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Puzzle design for my game
Using the information that we talked about (shown above) I then designed a puzzle meant to show stress as a trigger of anxiety.
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Cleaning House puzzle
- Micheal has to clean his messy house in a small amount of time it is now 15:00. Can Mike finish all his tasks?
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Facts
- Mike has work at 17:00
- He lives 30 miles from work
- He suffers from panic attacks
- It Takes him 10 minutes to get upstairs (war injury)
- Mike needs to do washing, take meds, let dogs out ands cut firewood
Clues
- Tasks can be done at same time
- He drives at 30mph
- Mike likes to take a 10 min break after every tasks
- Washing is by his bedroom
- Washing line is in the garden
- His meds are upstairs
- he uses water to take meds
- His washing takes 30 mins to wash in sink.
- Dog goes outside and relaxes from 15 mins.
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CAN YOU WORK IT OUT?
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Designing this puzzle gave me the idea to use it as a mechanic for my game which led to me designing the whole first level for my game based around the puzzle of cleaning. The images below are the storyboards that i created to showcase the design.
