Practicing level and puzzle design…more often
I’ve decided to use this website a little more proactively and start a blog where I spend about 45 minutes of my morning doing a little design task and releasing it into the ether. I want to:
Fulfil that creative itch and release something I’ve worked on often
Flex those design muscles that aren’t used as much in my current game design position
Get better at game design continually
Be able to reflect on how far I’ve come
The aim is to post something every day (I’ll take a break over the weekends though, I know where overworking leads). I’ll try to make it into a nice design routine!
So, the above image is a labyrinth puzzle. I first encountered these puzzles in an iOS game called Alcazar which has sadly been taken off the internet and no longer available. You can check out footage of it below.
The rules are very simple:
Enter from one door, exit from another
Every tile must be crossed exactly once
Moves are made orthogonally
Walls cannot be passed through
An everyday design challenge is suited well by these puzzles as they’re quick to do and I can explain the design process behind each one.
For the puzzle I drew at the top of the page, I started with a 6x6 grid as this gives the designer a lot of freedom to make the solution wind around the space quite nicely. Usually when drawing these I think of a path that would be interesting then construct the walls afterwards. For this I quite liked a the puzzle being oriented around the centrepiece below.
Immediately as I put those walls in the centre it segmented the puzzle into four 3x3 rooms which isn’t all that exciting if you know what you’re looking for. 3x3 labyrinth rooms are simpler and constrain this puzzle quite a bit towards the desired solution. I’m happy enough to roll with this design for this first post though.
From this and the entrance/exit points marked on the left of the above image I started to figure out the desired path I wanted the player to take from the top left of the labyrinth to the bottom left. Again as a 3x3 room is constrained, In this puzzle you can’t really double back on yourself and into a previous room.
So the solution becomes rather rote. For adding more walls, it’s just important to make sure that you don’t add so many that it shows the exact flow of the solution. Leave out enough information to hide the solution but provide enough to guide and constrain the player.
new entrances/exists were added at the other side of the puzzle to add variety and challenge the player to find the right entrance. Placement of these is important that they’re not redundant. For instance placing them right next to a wall which shows the puzzle is immediately unsolvable through that entrance. through these entrances give the player as much variety and scope for exploration as the true entrance/exits.
