So! Some of you don't like puzzle rooms. Have some alternate ideas?

[x4000]

For once, I'll have a brief post soliciting feedback.  My notes are simple:

1. The existing puzzle rooms aren't particularly going anywhere; I think it's a neat mechanic and something that can be solved quickly if you use the right mix of spells.  What I particularly like about it is that it uses your existing in-game assets to solve something that doesn't exist elsewhere in the game.

2. Clearly, having these be the only way to get mystery clues is lame, though.  So don't argue with me over point #1, you don't have to worry about that if you don't like them.   Whatever else happens, we'll be adding some secret missions that can get you mystery clues as a reward instead of having to do a puzzle, etc.

3. Both of the above said, it was never my intention that the current form of puzzle room would be the only type of puzzle existing in the game.  It's mainly just the only one I've thought of.  So that brings me to my question: what can you think of?

4. Requirements for a good puzzle: it should be playable with keyboard, gamepad, or mouse controls using your avatar and spells like you normally would.  If that means running around and flipping switches, or shooting something in the right order, or goodness knows what else, that's cool.  But not stuff where it's a popup overlay puzzle version of minesweeper or something.  Skyward Sword managed to do minesweeper using main game mechanics (digging claws and rupees), and it's another example of the sort of thing I'm looking for.

So... ideas?  It's not something I've been putting a lot of thought into because my mind has been occupied on other parts of the game, but I figured that since some folks don't like these puzzles (and other folks want more puzzle variety in general) I'd pose the question to you.

[Varil]

What about a variant of the "sliding ice block" puzzle seen in some games? You push a block(or in this case, shoot a block) and it slides in a specific direction until it hits something. To make it make more sense in context, have it be some sort of mechanism where various gears or whatzits slide around on rails. The play picks which direction they slide by shooting them. The goal could be to get the gears or whatzits into specific places.

The problem is I don't know how well this sort of puzzle would randomize...it might require actually building a set of puzzles to seed in the game.

To steal another idea, another common puzzle is the "weight" or "volume" puzzle. The one where you have(for instance) a tank of water(or a set of weights, or a pressure gauge...) that needs to be at a certain level. You'd have three(ish) buttons that each add or subtract different amounts, and you'd have to find the combination that leads to the correct level.

Probably formulaic at its basic level, you might be able to randomize it somewhat without getting impossible puzzles.

Maybe a sort of memory puzzle? Have a set of objects which change state in some fashion(flashing, or changing color), and do so in sequence, and afterwards the player has to shoot them in the order of the sequence?

You'd have to be careful with this one, too few and it's trivially easy, too many and it'll just become a game of chance.

Oh, maybe some sort of Blackjack variation? The player is dealt "cards" by some mechanism, and then they can shoot buttons to either draw another or stop, and the goal is to hit some arbitrary number(though I guess 21 works too), or get as close as possible without going over.

...I probably didn't have to explain that last one.

Oh, speaking of things associated with gambling, what about some sort of "race" minigame? Not for the player, oh no, for monsters! The players bets on the monster they want to win, and they can help out by trying to shoot or otherwise slow down(but not kill!) the others. Races shouldn't be longer than about 20-30 seconds though, otherwise it might get tedious.

I think I deviated from the puzzle theme somewhere, but oh well.

Oh, what about a timing puzzle? Have a sequence of objects which flash or change color in a certain pattern. One might change color every 3/4 seconds, one every 1-2, one every 5 seconds...you get the idea. The object of the game is to shoot each object(one at a time, not all at once or even rapidly in sequence) when it switches to a given color, or flashes, or whatever. If the player hits it when it isn't flashing, the puzzle resets.

[keith.lamothe]

(it is dark, you might get ea... ah, torch, well played)

(you see a number of strange gravestones)

"Allen, Beth, Cathy, Darrell, and Edna each live in one house in a neighborhood that has a Red house, a Blue house, a Yellow house, a Green house, and a White house."

"Edna does not live in the Yellow or Red house."

"The Blue house is between the Green and Red houses."

"The Green house only has one house next to it."

"Cathy lives next to the Red house"

(etc, etc)

"Starting with Allen, who lives in each house?"

(commence miasma whipping each of 5 numbered spheres until the right house color comes up for each)

[NyQuil]

Perhaps make mana infinite or greatly increase the recharge speed of mana in these rooms.  Waiting for mana to recharge on low mp chars can be torturous, especially in bat form.

Unless I'm doing something completely wrong.




edit: wrong wording, I meant increase mana recharge, not reduce

[mrhanman]

I still think making you play a round of Tidalis would be awesome.  And innovative! 

[nanostrike]

I'm happy to see that the clues will be in Secret Missions, at least.

As for puzzles...something FASTER is what I'd really like to see.  Yeah, the current puzzles are workable and all, but they're really slow.  I think that's the largest problem.

Whatever the puzzle is, it should be completable in a minute or so, without running into any major hassles.  Some examples of "Hassles" are, as people said, mana needing to recharge, having to run around the room with platforms/bat form because of odd angles, and having spells sometimes affect more than what you're aiming at.

Really glad to see this getting attention.

[Professor Paul1290]

How about disarming a bomb?

So you enter this room and it's a long hallway (not unlike a basement) with treasure at the other end (as well as the mystery clue), but the treasure is rigged to explode if someone tries to retrieve it. There's a timer that starts and continues to count down as long as it detects someone in the room (it stops and resets if you leave).

You have to navigate the hallway to the treasure at the other end and "disable" all the triggers for the bomb along the way. The triggers themselves are colored switches that cycle through element colors attached to a set of vertical lasers that will detect you if you try to pass them. You need to hit each trigger with an element color that it's showing to "disable" it. If you hit a trigger with the wrong element, try to run past one without disabling it first, or run out of time then the treasure and mystery clue is destroyed.


I suppose a stand alone version with a trigger, lasers, and bomb bundled together could also be used as a regular room trap as well.

[NyQuil]

I kind of like what prof above said, but had a slightly different take on it.  It isn't quite a puzzle, but perhaps either a decent sized room or maybe hallway that required all monster spawners to be found and destroyed before a chest or something with the clue spawns or is just given.

Perhaps depending on the difficulty settings the spawners would have different behaviors or not show up on the map?  Or have the chunk disable a random enchant while you are in it?

In my head the rooms are about half the size of the maze rooms, but I find those rooms unwieldy and rarely explore them all the way unless I'm searching for something.

[BenMiff]

While this isn't a puzzle, it would be nice to have a 4th Ilari at the settlement which takes a chunk of Consciousness Shards and spits out a random reward; one of the rewards could be a Mystery Clue. (Others could be random enchants, random amounts of consciousness shards or items, random guardian scrolls, etc; I'd expect it to cost quite a bit, though [5,000 - 10,000 shards; maybe have 3 options, one at 5,000, one at 7,500 and one at 10,000 with different probabilities.]

As for puzzles, a "black box" puzzle using your shots and a seperate grid of chests (of which you need to open the right ones to get an assembled clue) could be interesting, since you'd need to figure out where the "orbs" your shots are bouncing off are. (Black Box is here: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/java/blackbox.html). Higher difficulties (that I guess would tie to strategic difficulty) would then have more orbs to find. I'd suggest making the orbs diamonds so that the reflection behaviour is reasonably deducable.

[khadgar]

Do you want these new ideas to have fail states, or is that not what is intended for puzzle rooms? In your minesweeper example, if you "fail", does your chance at the mystery go with it, or do you get another chance?

I would like to see very simple mechanics used in very simple puzzles.

* Switch - Casting only 3/4/5/6 spells, turn all the blue orbs red. Failure causes reset.
* Bullet Hell - Small room (single screen), avoid being hit by any of the shots coming from the edges of the room for 30-60 seconds. Could be a preset pattern, or a procedurally generated one based on difficulty.
* Simon Says - Shoot the orbs in the same order that they blink in 3 consecutive times. Failure causes restart.
* Gather - Medium sized room, randomly spawning items. Collect a certain number in a certain time limit.
* Doublecross - Medium sized room, multiple paths. Several crystals across the map. You have to touch each crystal without doubling back on yourself or crossing an area you already crossed (so, the player leaves a trail of fire or something?)

[Penumbra]

Have any of you played the board game Mansions of Madness by Fantasy Flight? They have an interesting mechanic for creating dynamic random puzzles. They are mostly of the sliding block variety, either creating images or connecting circuits or some such.

They are random, but give limited moves making the player think first, but not requiring much time. Something like that (or even randomly generated Tidalis puzzles!) would fit nicely.

[Decoyrobot]

How about a puzzle room that is like lost woods in ocarina of time, you enter one door and are given more doors as options to navigate through with some hint as to which door is correct?

Or maybe some form of "lights out" puzzle, i mistook the current puzzle rooms as one of these puzzles at first, i was expecting some sort of pattern when i switched one of the colours.

It'd be nice to see puzzle rooms appear else where, so far pyramids can be lengthy to navigate.

Oh and i'm always down for some tower of hanoi as well .

[Misery]

On the note of puzzle rooms,

I like the concept of having these in the games.

My issue with them..... is that they dont seem very, well, puzzling.   The current puzzle rooms arent really about figuring something out, they are mostly just about aiming correctly at the orbs and firing until you get the proper results.

When I saw them the first time I'd actually thought it was gonna be the sort of thing where you change one orb, and the ones next to it change, you know, that type of puzzle, but...... yeah, it isnt.

Wouldnt mind seeing something that's more of a "proper" puzzle.

[timesend]

After reviewing my idea- I am going to simplify massively (have to reduce those wall of texts.)

Firstly - I would like to see a bat maze, a simple maze room made out of one square blocks which you have to you bat form to tranverse, with traps and the such and the mystery in the middle.

Secondly- Rhino Stampede, On the right side of the screen is a rhino spawner, there is a number of switches on the floor which alter the terrain above, all you have to do is get the rhino from right to left. The switches also trigger different sets of traps thus you have to calculate how much punishment poor rhino takes.

Thridly- Windstorm shanenigans- a mysterious cave has appeared inside the windstorm, strange symbols highlight the doors, can you solve the puzzle, before your time runs out. Simple rune puzzle, pick right door, could be a simple as red green blue, as shown by the first room. Or perhaps more cryptic clues.
 

[Teal_Blue]

Don't know if this sounds silly or not, but an idea came to me while reading the first post on puzzle ideas...

What if there was a room somewhere, even outside if we used the natural ground formations... but the whole idea is this:

You go into this room, or area, there is a huge vast reservoir (spelling?) of water, not necessarily acid, but hey if that is what people want then go for it, but basically there is a timer on this valve that is thrown when we walk into the room, or past a certain area, maybe a trip pad on the ground if the trap is outside? But the timer gives us XX amount of time to get through the room to find what ever it is that is important to find... maybe some treasure rooms have these? But certainly not all of them. 

Anyway, thats it, a timer to countdown til the room is flooded and we wind up having to try to get back to the door, against the current even, and get out or perish in the flood?

Just an idea. 

Thank you for listening,
-Teal


p.s.  or maybe even lava?   oh my!!      that might be crazy fun!!