Types of Puzzles scott kim

Its not the most obvious thing you notice in games, but it is still there. Puzzles are apart of many games, either by themselves, within a layer of a game, on the web/ phone and in education.

The main concept Kim gives us, is that  a puzzle is "fun to solve" and has a "right answer" (opposed to everyday problems)
In Kim's article he gives us a pyramid of types of puzzles
(starting from top to bottom)

Games: the most obvious multiple puzzle game is chess, which is based solely on working out how to defeat the opponent.
Toy: There is no fixed goal, player is free to explore.
Experience: Non- interactive experience
Motivation: within motivations there are 4 main reasons people play puzzles
-deeper meaning : to find order in the universe
-Charater and setting: immerse self in into the story
-Challenge: people love challenges
-Distraction: from everyday life

Kim then tells us of 5 genres that puzzles can be found in.


Action puzzles:
-combines puzzle with time and pressure.
-you can recover from your errors,  e.g. in Tetris, if you make a mistake, focus on getting rid of it by getting rid of the lines.
- easy to learn from your mistakes

Story puzzles:
-Use's puzzles to tell the story.
- Makes the player think 'why is there a puzzle in the game?' what information does the puzzle give?
examples of this is 'Proffessor Layton' where you have to sole the puzzles given to you to continue the game.

Competitive puzzle:
-Multi-player, where each player plays a separate puzzle game.
-The main attribute of competitive puzzle is the scoring.

Construction puzzle:
-Combines solving puzzles with construction. e.g.  in some dungeons on Zelda,you would sometime have to move blocks of stone around to create an opening for a new room. In Neopets, to feed for your pets you would have to take different challenges/puzzles to obtain food.
-In Tetris, it uses Modularity ( meaning different pieces can fit together).

Pure puzzle:
-Puzzle solving is the focus of the game.

Kim's 8 steps to a finished game:
1. Inspiration
- By looking at other peoples games you can get inspiration from the artwork or gameplay mechanics.
- It doesn't necessarily have to be video games, board games have different mechanics from non digital games.

2. Simplify:
-When making a game, look at the bare essentials of it, there is no need to jump straight  designing irrelevant details of the game when it has just been born.

3. Editor:
-Test the game with to find faults.
-At this stage there is no need to worry about the art, just get the basic gameplay finished.

4. Specs:
- Gather all your information together. e.g make a design document.

5. Level Design:
- The level designer has to create individual puzzles and knows how to solve them.

6. Hinting:
- Let the player get frustrated enough to care about finishing the puzzle, but not enough to make them give up. Hinting keeps the flow of frustration in check with the player.

7. Testing:
- The only way to know if the game will be successful is if you have a small section of the public test it for you.

8. Presentation:
- The final piece is to add art, sound, user interface ETC...