How To Fail At Puzzle Games

Everyone loves a classic puzzle game, but not everyone can fail at making one, don't worry, I'll tell you how. :)

If you would like to learn to code, I recommend these great online courses! (It's what I'm using.)

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Music:
Doh De Oh by Kevin MacLeod

[edward]

When player spend more than 2 seconds on the puzzle, their character should be like "Hmmm, that key might need to go there to let the water raise to trigger the switch that opens the door."

[dracosteven]

I love you keeping on saying on "It's technically still a puzzle game."

[hopemetal]

The actual puzzle in the First Four Presidents's Favorite Color puzzle is to figure out you need to jump cause you didn't say you had to do it beforehand.

[truegreenheaded]

to make it a real puzzle game, make figuring the mechanics itself a puzzle, and also the goal, and the controls, and how to advance, and make the last level impossible, so that the puzzle is figuring out its actually impossible, this way we maximise the play time.

[Wiki_Sad]

Aaaand you just created hello neighbor 3! Congratulations!!!

[mikeysheep]

1:44 is why Chambers 6 and 7 exist in the original "Portal" game. The devs had planned to introduce the energy orb mechanic with the acid, but decided to make a few buffer chambers to add the mechanics more slowly.

[chickenpng]

maybe the true puzzle game here was the friends we made along the way

[sundownbrick]

this video was gold. wow.
so many videos out there 10x longer fail to teach, entertain and amaze you all at the same time

this was incredible, when you said "it's still technically a puzzle game" and the bg music kinda "looped" and changed rythm omg thats art man

[iexist]

While this advice is important for the puzzles themselves, i have a few other important things to mention.

Make everything tedious. That way you can increase play time. Make movement slow, put a pointlessly long distance between each puzzle aspect, force the player to close and re open the game to reset the puzzle (if you must make a reastart button then just make it as slow as possible) and have the mechanics slow you down.

Additionally, make sure that the solutions to the puzzles are inconsistent and difficult to execute, and make each step in the puzzle require the previous one to even see it.

Also, it is vital that every mistake made by the player should force them to restart the level.
Just make it unfun to actually beat it.

[JavaJack]

That outro is gold :) I still haven't solved the puzzle of how to sufficiently ensmarten myself to be capable of making the games I want to make.

[Artindi]

There are lots of videos and articles about puzzle design, so if you actually want to be good at it, I advise watching and reading as much as you can. Also, try using a level editor like from portal 2 or even creative Minecraft, to practice making puzzles for your friends to try. Just like with anything, practice makes perfect!

[omen]

You know "I Wanna Lockpick" ? The best thing about this game is not the mechanics, the cool sprites and the nice level progression. It's the fact that you are always opening doors but with slightly more steps every time.

the look on Aliensrock face would be epic if he realized that

[Baconator]

I just found this series, and I love it. It reminds me of "Terrible Writing Advice."

[DaikoruArtwin]

Honestly, I'd consider puzzle games as being the hardest to design correctly. Graphics are typically very simple, coding the mechanics is also usually simple... But coming up with unique puzzle mechanics that provide very interesting challenges, making full use of these, and coming up with puzzles that are the perfect level of difficulty and are solvable only through logic solving skills and not through luck or cheesing, that is no easy feat.

Heck, there's a Sudoku variant channel I watch, and while the solvers are impressive, I find the Sudoku makers to be even more impressive: they carefully craft each sudoku so that solvers will always need to figure out specific tricks to progress through, and somehow the whole thing really ends into a unique solution. Even if it looks stupid or lazy (writing stuff with hints, or 100% empty grid), it still somehow ends up being a perfectly challenging puzzle, and I don't think I'll ever understand how they manage to pull this off.

[Strogman]

When you introduce a new mechanic, make sure to have the big subversion of it be in the first level that uses it.

Even better yet, *introduce* it with the subversion! Then only show them the way it usually works later!

[ProjectionistYT]

this is what the garten of banban dev's watched to develop there game

[engchann]

When it takes longer to execute the solution than think of it, you've created the PERFECT puzzle. (excl intro/tutorials ofc)

I totally won't just skip the chamber if there's a lot of that.

[kevinm]

You should always make sure to include "memorize this sequence of symbols and input them somewhere". It's the most fun type of puzzle, especially if the symbols are _just_ complicated or alien enough to make them hard to memorize!

[Abysskist]

I love how his knowledge of video game design allows him to be so funny in the ways he instructs people to fail.

[SophiaWoessner]

Every game is a puzzle game if you just throw random tiles at a canvas