Quote:
Originally Posted by diego
The point is - you DON'T KNOW whether the password is correct or not even when you DID find the right clue. Because there're other clues, other books for example. Let's imagine a scene like this:
With good game design, there should be several clues pointing to the right direction when searching for a computer pass. Like, the owner of the computer is interested in philosophy, then there's a book on Greek philosophers at a bookcase with underlined article on Aristotle. There's also an Aristotle bust on the desk. Chances are, "Aristotle" could be the right password.
Now, in "low creativity", you will just CLICK on a computer and your character will AUTOMATICALLY type the password. "High creativity" will force YOU, the player to think about what could the password be based on clues you've found, and enter it by yourself, or choose one in menu of "Socrates, Plato and Aristotle". |
Well yes i see your point - But i still think this has more to do with the difficulty of the puzzle, then how creative you as a player has to be to solve it.
A creative puzzle doesn't necessarily has to be difficult, and a difficult puzzle isn't neccesarily creative, in my book these are two different things. Part of the reason i mentioned the "Guess the Skunkabe move" from Sam&Max, is that it was actualy a quite easy puzzle, but it still gave you that "What the h... - AHA" experince.
If i play along with your idea:
Just automaticlly typing the password is simply too easy, and doesn't require any creative thinking.
Showing a list of different philosophers would give away that we are looking for a philosopher, and would take away the AHA experince from the player.
Having to type the password might be the one that force the player to actually think, but it has the problem of misspelling, players might correctly guess the password, but then be rejected because they have misspelled it, and then spend hours looking for the "correct" password.
I still have nightmares about the old text adventures where you had to type everything, and which especially for us who don't have english as first language, made it more a question of guessing the correct spelling and syntax, than actually solving the puzzles 
I unfortunately can't see how you example can work as a creative puzzle, without adding some other element to it.
