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Originally Posted by Jelena

I know the cookie puzzle is often spoken of as a pointless and difficult puzzle. I just want to add my 2 cents: as a middle aged woman who often bake cookies I have to say it wasn't very difficult at all (pointless perhaps, but still fun imho). Isn't it so, that the level of difficulty often is dependent on who you are and what you're good at. Some people are good at mathematical/logical puzzles while others have a talent for linguistics or have a good spatial perception etc.

That's very true. I can understand why some people would find that puzzle fun to figure out; I just wished it was more relevant to the goal at hand.

Originally Posted by Steve Ince

This makes sense to me. Markers often use an alcohol base which helps the ink dry faster, so if the marker had dried out it would make sense to use the alcohol to make it work again. It sounds like the designer didn't make this clear enough so you understood it.

Yeah, I understood it, but only after I did it by accident. Maybe if the syringe was already filled with alcohol, or you didn't need the syringe at all, then it would have been more obvious for me, but you had use the syringe on the alcohol bottle, then use that combined item on the pen. It was all a little far fetched for me to catch on to at the time.

Originally Posted by Steve Ince

As a designer, you can become a little blind to the failings of your own puzzle design. It's easy to think a puzzle is logical because you know exactly how it works and the rationale behind it. You must put yourself in the mind of the player who is coming to a puzzle completely fresh.

That's exactly what I want to avoid with my game. We'll be play-testing a lot and making sure there are enough hints throughout so you know what you're supposed to be doing at all times. The real challenge is keeping it clever without making it too easy.

Originally Posted by Alucard

I agree. I mean, i actually enjoy solving puzzles but the story, characters and atmosphere are far more important. I don't enjoy puzzles when they're too hard. That's the main problem i have with the Myst games with all those 'logic' puzzles. I'd much prefer the difficulty of the puzzles, in games, to be just right.

That's how I feel. Although, I think it's easier to make an "interactive novel" than it is a game. Naturally integrating good puzzles into a game world is something I really respect and want to accomplish with my own game.

Originally Posted by Kazmajik

Too many games these days put all their energies into everything but the gameplay itself. Syberia, Dreamfall, and Culpa Innata come to mind. These games fleshed out their storylines and characters and atmosphere well enough, but when it came to actually playing the games, you had a woeful lack of interactivity in the first two games considering the many opportunities to have things to do, and in the third it all boiled down to a few random roadblock puzzles that were hammered onto the game world, rather than grown organically from it. The experiences left me somewhat empty.

I agree. Interactivity is key. Even if the puzzles in a game are lacking, the player should be able to explore and interact with their surroundings in some way or another. If all you're doing is walking across lovely backdrops, going from one NPC to the next then no matter how fleshed out the characters are, you start to feel a slight disconnect with the world.

Originally Posted by Terramax

I think it boils down to whether a puzzle is fun or not. It could be an incredibly hard, even illogical puzzle, but if it's involving, enjoyable to participate in and rewarding to understand and overcome, most will stick with it without gripes.

I would also like to add that originality in puzzles is important. I'm sure you've played a game or two where you could have sworn that you've done that puzzle before. I think people tend to like certain types of puzzles, but it's always worth trying to keep them fresh and exciting. I would use Broken Sword 3's crate puzzles as an example of exactly what not to do if you want your puzzles to remain fresh.

Originally Posted by Jat316sob

I love hard puzzles, because one gets a great sense of achievement upon solving them. There are for me, however, two caveats to this position. Firstly the game must be deserving, if I'm playing a game and the world's most ingenious puzzle is there, if I don't care about the story or like the environments, it won't matter. I'm not going to travel back and forth through some dull locations trying a solve a puzzle in the midst of a story I'm not at all compelled by. I'm just going to head straight for walkthorough so I can progress. Secondly, the puzzle has to be logical. That doesn't just mean standard logic, it can also be abstract, but as long as I can look at the available information and the solution, and conclude that one could reasonably deduce this, that is okay.

I can handle some tough puzzles, but if I know the goal and I've still spent over an hour trying to accomplish something like I did with Still Life's lock-picking puzzle, I tend to get frustrated. That puzzle was doable, but only if you were willing to write down the results of pushing every prong. Sometimes I just don't have the time