The Art of Puzzle Design | How Game Designers Explore Ideas and Themes with Puzzles and Problems

This Video Explores the Art of Puzzle Design, and how game designers explore ideas and themes using both puzzles and problems. Puzzle design is often viewed as an arcane art only a few are privy to, but in this essay, we explore the many design philosophies creators have employed to manufacture them. What we find is there are as many ways to make a puzzle as there are puzzles themselves, and this pluralism feeds into what the purpose of puzzles have been and are in our society today.
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We explore games as varied as The Witness, braid, Baba is You, Infinifactory, Stephens sausage roll and fez to support the idea that puzzle are ultimately the aesthetic form of thought itself.
Sources
Books
- The Puzzle Instinct Marcel Danesi
- Bob Bates -On game design
- Infinite Powers Steven Strogatz
- Is God a programmer? Geoff Simons
Videos
-Gdc talk Solving Puzzle Design Jolie Menzel
• Level Design Workshop:...
- Empuzzlement Blow, droquen, Ten Bosche
• IndieCade 2013 - Empuz...
-Designing to reveal the nature of the universe
• IndieCade 2011: Jonath...
-The Arcane art of puzzle dependency diagrams
www.gdcvault.com/play/1017978...
-Open ended puzzle design at zachtronics
• Open-Ended Puzzle Desi...
- Breaking Conventions with the legend of zelda
• Breaking Conventions w...
-Making Baba is you
• #GAMELAB19: Making Bab...
-Bob Bates Designing the puzzle
www.lucasstyle.com/tutorials/D...
- A look back at fezs Black Monolith
kotaku.com/a-look-back-at-fez...
- Designing Baba is yous rule wrtiing system
www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3...
-How to make a good puzzle
www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TomHe...
Gdc hearts and minds
• Hearts and Minds

[@thinker2273]

Just, wow. This is probably the best video about puzzle design and probably game design I've ever watched. The thing about the community of Fez brute-forcing the Black Monolith, and "ending up with the solution to a question they did not know" is such a brilliant way of putting that situation. Something else which I find interesting to note is how humans are unique in that we're about the only species on this planet which creates puzzles. There may be puzzles to solve in nature, but we're the only species to actively seek out those puzzles and even go so far as to create new ones, which seems illogical by every definition, but that's what makes us unique.

[@thegameoveranalyser4835]

Thank you Thinker, I appreciate the kind words! Great insights, and yes it seems a uniquely human impulse to seek answers to metaphysical questions, and to also devise arbitrary conundrums to satisfy the instinct. Its also fascinating to think about how the universe created us, and we in turn seek to uncover its mysteries.A quote by Carl Sagan comes to mind, ""We are a way for the universe to know itself". I wanted to delve deeper into how puzzles both reflect us and the universe because we are one in the same, but the video was getting too long winded as it was. I'm always fascinated by the communities that build around games like Fez, darks souls, bloodborne, shadow of the collosus etc. There is this clear yearning to know the truth, and people sometimes go to obsessive lengths to solve them. What Fascination about puzzles and paradoxes in particular is that they try to destabilize our apprehension of the truth, they show us that we may never know the answers, and that''s fine. There are many meditative traditions that prescribe parodoxes and an intellectual catastrophe to guide people towards enlightenment as well, and both fez and the witness encode this idea in different ways. Thanks for the comment!

[@JohnDaniels]

One of my favorites by Carl Sagan is: " without the tools of science, the machinery of life would be invisible", I believe that's the correct quote, I'm paraphrasing.

[@GameDesignFoundry]

Out of all my Game Design knowledge, puzzle design is easily my weakest, I enjoyed the video a lot, even learned a whole bunch I didn’t know about! Keep it up my friend!😁

[@thegameoveranalyser4835]

Thanks Triss, I appreciate the kind words!

[@gd7681]

What’s with the weird comments? Did you buy comments or something

[@hipjoeroflmto4764]

Seems normal to me

[@tylerackerman1391]

This video is criminally under watched. Fantastic job! Puzzles are my favorite type of game, and this really helped shed some fascinating light on them.

[@CreativeSteve69]

i just discovered ya on my timeline this video got recommended to me. I thoroughly enjoyed this talk about puzzle game design a lot. I'm a beginner level of a gamedev myself and this was a thorough eye-opener of how to create my puzzles for my first game. Will definitely give your other videos a watch.

[@SarahMaeBea]

An incredibly dense and well researched video! I really like the concept of puzzles as a way to find ultimate truth in the universe. Communication with an intentional creator. Even if it's the small universe of a video game, and the creator is a human.

[@SnailSpaceWTF]

WELL DONE! Such a well thought out video as I explore puzzle authoring myself

[@FrauBlucher108]

This is so inspirational. Thank you!

[@findthestones]

Great video. Learned a lot. Thanks for sharing!!

[@Ceej16]

this was such an amazing video to listen to, nice work and thank you gave me a lot to think about for my puzzle game

[@Paruthi.618]

awesome video.. lot of very useful information, Thanks

[@opalkunz9998]

Fantastic video, thank you. Great video. Thanks.

[@TheFallorn]

Fantastic video!

[@ThatsJustLikeYourOpinionMan]

This was an incredible video

[@oakn984]

i adore this video

[@blarvinius]

Enjoyed!

[@royalhaaki4064]

Awesome video

[@KonTraxb]

Great video. Thanks.

[@thegameoveranalyser4835]

Thanks Kon, I appreciate it!

[@sahil_juneja]

Great video. Would have also loved a discussion/views on games like Hitman (recent 2) and how they approach the sandbox type puzzle design.

[@thegameoveranalyser4835]

Thanks Sahil. Im planning future video on holistic and emergent design in games, so i hope to cover games like hitman.

[@JohnDaniels]

What did you think about Limbo and Inside puzzles?

[@j.m.860]

I like video games, but I don't like video games in which I have to compete against others people like FPS or sports games. But I really like puzzle games. Your video made me realize that puzzle games are games in which you compete against yourself and not others and I think this is what I like the most about puzzle games.

[@precurrentgaming5300]

Generally my experience is that we have an innate desire to “know”. Solving things is a prime way to meet this desire, as coming up with a solution that works is a clear way to show that we “know” whatever it is we are solving for. Puzzles play off of that because they create a scenario to demonstrate knowledge by achieving a solution.

[@thegameoveranalyser4835]

You bring up a great point, Puzzles could just be a device that allows us to indulge an evolutionary instinct, and the many ways it manifests in culture are just variations on that theme. Some might say this is reductionist, but its important to guard against over analysis at times. However, part of my channel is sometimes just indulging where the question may take us, hence my name. Thanks for the comment!

[@precurrentgaming5300]

@@thegameoveranalyser4835 yes it can be very eye opening to indulge in where the question may take us as you say. Great video!

[@p.boyerrichard9623]

Great video. Thanks. Great video! Btw, I need information about music that plays at 6:24 Thanks! Fantastic video, thank you. Great video. Thanks. Great video. Thanks. Fantastic video, thank you.

[@dontcallithzzzln]

Came here for game dev advice, left with an existensial crisis

[@bornacmrecnjak1019]

Great video! Btw, I need information about music that plays at 6:24 Thanks!

[@thegameoveranalyser4835]

Thanks Borna! Its called fortress of lies from the nier automata soundtrack

[@cosmotect]

Bruh Awesome video,puzzles are awesome, of a bit overanalized :p

[@belalghozlan3888]

Fantastic video, thank you. Great video. Thanks. Great video. Thanks. Great video! Btw, I need information about music that plays at 6:24 Thanks!

[@thegameoveranalyser4835]

Thanks belal, its called fortress of lies from the nier automata soundtrack.

[@jordonadrien5402]

Great video. Thanks. Fantastic video, thank you. Bruh Awesome video,puzzles are awesome, of a bit overanalized :p

[@thegameoveranalyser4835]

Thanks Jordan!

[@BlackPuzzleGame]

Nicee 😉👍

[@ChibiMangaFashion232]

What is the game at 2:44?

[@stephenkamenar]

how could you not include the awesome sound when showing the witness world puzzles

[@lora6938]

What is the game at 17:05 Please! ?

[@ZWZDOzLtxBEO]

Great video, however I wish you'd omitted spoilers - by which I mean The Witness' environmental puzzle idea (all the more the final environmental puzzle) and, to lesser extent, Baba is you going really meta. I think that showcasing the footage is a bit damaging to player''s experience - I personally loved the feeling of epiphany I had when I first realized that there are environmental puzzles, especially after I missed the first one (at the top of the mountain) as I got distracted by some other idea (but also, my thinking rarely aligns with what developers envisioned for me :)). I understand that you wanted to make a point, but I only mean the footage - even a highly detailed description of that process shouldn't spoil the fun as much as an in-game footage does. Still, excellent video, keep it up.

[@thegameoveranalyser4835]

Thanks for the kind words, and I hear you on the spoilers. I probably should have reiterated that there would be spoilers if I was going to reveal those details in the video, and in retrospect I should have been more careful about including them. i put a spoiler tag at the start of the video, but i get how showing footage of those things could ruin the experience for some. I'll be more weary of this in the future. Thanks for the feedback!

[@g4m3z24]

whats this game called?

[@stephenkamenar]

1:05 actually, for solving that puzzle you aren't even rewarded with more puzzles

[@ApocalypticNeon]

Weird bot comments here Cool video though 👍✨️

[@sooooooooDark]

17:05 whats that games name 😋

[@JibreelProductions]

The first one was interesting, talking about truth, that is a bit like the game i want to make. Tho it reminded me of this sign. 10:32 That is God-your True Lord. So what is beyond the truth except falsehood? How can you then be turned away?” - Dr. Mustafa Khattab, the Clear Quran

[@JohnDaniels]

FYI: The puzzle to life is, you are an NPC

[@gilmarsilvavaimengao7932]

puzzle games paga o que vocês mi devem faz as pessoas ver anúncio para ganha dinheiro pra eles mais não paga ninguém jogo de montagem Hexa puzzle tirarão ate da play store o jogo

[@DesolusDev]

Fantastic video, thank you.

[@thegameoveranalyser4835]

Thanks Mark, I appreciate it !