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Unskippable puzzles

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Often when you have an uncommon sequence, like shooting or stealth, the developer thrown in a large button that says “skip this sequence”. The idea is that maybe the players aren’t up to that particular type of challenge, so you let them skip it so they can still enjoy the game.

Why limit it to uncommon sequences though? What if someone just wants to see the story unfold and completely doesn’t care about trying to figure out puzzles of any kind, why would you force them to solve any puzzles at all to see the story?

Assuming the design of the game is modular enough, do you see any reason to ever disallow skipping puzzles?

     
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I’m sure I’ve made this known before but I absolutely hate the idea that a game is separated into “story” and “puzzles”. As far as I can see this idea wasn’t around before the turn of the century, around the time adventure games starting turning bad.

Take a simple example - finding to the swordmaster’s house in Monkey Island. You COULD view this as a “puzzle” and we all know what you have to do to complete it. But really from the perspective of the player it’s just Guybrush in a certain dilemma on Melee island.  Having a “skip puzzle” button flash up would let the player know there is something required of them, completely changing the nature of the experience. “Oh, it’s another puzzle”.

And then we get the idea that the puzzle is somehow separate from the story, so what happens between when Guybrush has to find out how to get to the house, and when he arrives there, is unimportant. The same goes with insult swordfighting. The whole process of puzzle solving, the errors we make, the struggle we go through, is the central part of what makes the game A GAME. You could say the same for action sequences, but there is a trend to actually make them separate from the “story”, no doubt influenced by the modern idea that GAME=STORY+PUZZLES.

     
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Antrax - 22 November 2013 12:41 AM

Often when you have an uncommon sequence, like shooting or stealth, the developer thrown in a large button that says “skip this sequence”. The idea is that maybe the players aren’t up to that particular type of challenge, so you let them skip it so they can still enjoy the game.

Why limit it to uncommon sequences though? What if someone just wants to see the story unfold and completely doesn’t care about trying to figure out puzzles of any kind, why would you force them to solve any puzzles at all to see the story?

If you just see the story unfold without solving any puzzles, wouldn’t that be watching a movie?  The whole point of adventure games going back to the interactive fiction books (example- “You come to a fork in the road.  If you go down the road on the left, turn to page 26.  If you go down the road on the right, turn to page 51.) that preceded them is, ideally, full immersion in the story to the point that you exert some measure of control over your character’s fate by helping him or her overcome obstacles, and in the greater scheme of things every obstacle to overcome can be seen as a puzzle to solve.  Remove the puzzles and you lose the interactivity.

Antrax - 22 November 2013 12:41 AM

Assuming the design of the game is modular enough, do you see any reason to ever disallow skipping puzzles?

I do indeed.  The real fun of adventure games is in solving the puzzles.  Any overarching story that links the puzzles together is just icing on the cake.

     

Warning- People won’t have as much of a sense of humor about you putting an Alka Seltzer in your mouth then staggering into a restaurant while shouting “THE VIRUS HAS MUTATED!” as you’d hope they would.

Consider this: People say “Ewwww!!!” when they hear about a guy having a hairy bum or hairy back, yet every Teddy Bear ever made has had both a hairy bum AND a hairy back and nobody complains about them; In fact, people think Teddy Bears are adorable.

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If you don’t want to solve the puzzles yourself, just use a walkthrough. Action sequences may be hard even if someone tells you exactly what to do, which is why some games have the option to skip them, but puzzles are all about figuring out what to do, not actually doing it.

     
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Good puzzles are integrated in the story, so if you skip them you miss part of the story.

     
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tsa - 22 November 2013 06:03 AM

Good puzzles are integrated in the story, so if you skip them you miss part of the story.

Spot on. Even The 7th Guest adheres to this, it appears to have separate puzzles but if you skipped them all you would miss the main encounter with Stauf during the game and his hobby of toys and games.

The question is: are good action sequences integrated into the story? In adventure games, mostly not.

     
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The same reason why you don’t skip action in FPS or strategy in RTS. It’s a game, interactive entertainment with it’s own rules and genres. Adventure games are about exploration and solving puzzles. And there are very few really well-written games anyway - literature or movies are far better at this.

     

PC means personal computer

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If you want to know just the story, just ask your friend who’s smarter than you and better at adventure games than you.  I’m sure they’d relay a good story.

Bt

     
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tsa - 22 November 2013 06:03 AM

Good puzzles are integrated in the story, so if you skip them you miss part of the story.

I agree, for example in Memoria there was a maze puzzle that you could skip, but if you did so then you would also skip a part of the story, and as I see it, an important part of the experience of playing the game.

It however also depends on the puzzle and the game, and especially for mini-games or isolated puzzle skipping puzzles can be an acceptable option. For example in Keepsake most of the puzzles are isolated mechanical puzzles, and it has a multilevel help system where the 4th level help actually solves the puzzle for you, but many of the puzzles in Keepsake are also very difficult and only few are able to solve them all, so I think it is fine in such a case. If you however play a game like Keepsake and just have the help system solve all the puzzles for you without even trying to solve it yourself, then… Well then you probably shouldn’t have chosen to play Keepsake in the first place.

So to answer you question, whether or not skipping puzzles should be allowed, then it really depends on the type of game and the type of puzzles, but trying to make a game that will both satisfy players that want challenges and players that only want the story, is simply not possible!
You will just end up satisfying nobody and make a crappy game.

 

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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Kurufinwe - 22 November 2013 03:04 AM

Action sequences may be hard even if someone tells you exactly what to do, which is why some games have the option to skip them, but puzzles are all about figuring out what to do, not actually doing it.

That gets back to how I’ve always defined the core difference between adventure games and RPGs- In adventure games you rely on your brain rather than on your trigger finger.

     

Warning- People won’t have as much of a sense of humor about you putting an Alka Seltzer in your mouth then staggering into a restaurant while shouting “THE VIRUS HAS MUTATED!” as you’d hope they would.

Consider this: People say “Ewwww!!!” when they hear about a guy having a hairy bum or hairy back, yet every Teddy Bear ever made has had both a hairy bum AND a hairy back and nobody complains about them; In fact, people think Teddy Bears are adorable.

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Sage - 22 November 2013 11:57 AM

That gets back to how I’ve always defined the core difference between adventure games and RPGs- In adventure games you rely on your brain rather than on your trigger finger.

Probably why I prefer turn-based RPGs and strategy games, then. No need for a quick trigger finger. Smile



On-topic:

As has been said: good puzzles are integrated into the story, so skipping them makes you miss out on part of the story. I agree.


With that out of the way, there are a few exceptions where a ‘skip button’ wouldn’t really be out of place (to either cater to the more casual players or to cater to the dexterously challenged players).

For instance, I like it when the developer lets you skip action (reflex/dexterity-based) sequences after you fail them a few times. L.A. Noire is pretty much the definitive example: fail three times at a car chase / foot chase / gun fight / fist fight / stealth tail / other, and you get the option to skip the sequence and go straight to the end of it. This is how it should be done, imo: you get to experience the action sequence and if you fail it a few times, you can skip the sequence and only the sequence. You don’t miss any part of the story, nor any part of the actual investigations…

Allowing you to skip such sequences on the first attempt, on the other hand, is a concept I don’t like. You need to be able to experience them partly at least.


Similarly, some puzzles could be made skippable, but then only if it’s a standalone puzzle and/or a minigame (like putting the turtle skeleton back together in The Dig, or the broken light bridge mechanism in The Dig, or the rain dance puzzle in BoUT, or the game of whack-a-mole in Sam & Max for instance). And then only if you haven’t solved it after a few minutes / after a few tries, imo.

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

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Blackthorne - 22 November 2013 11:36 AM

If you want to know just the story, just ask your friend who’s smarter than you and better at adventure games than you.  I’m sure they’d relay a good story.

Bt

Or you could always play Telltale games.  You’d likely be their target audience.

     
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Lambonius - 22 November 2013 05:08 PM

Or you could always play Telltale games.  You’d likely be their target audience.

I will admit that this was hilarious, but three Telltale digs in less than 24 hours is excessive even for you…  Wink  Let’s move on…

     
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Caliburn - 22 November 2013 05:52 PM
Lambonius - 22 November 2013 05:08 PM

Or you could always play Telltale games.  You’d likely be their target audience.

I will admit that this was hilarious, but three Telltale digs in less than 24 hours is excessive even for you…  Wink Let’s move on…

They’re big successful boys, they can handle it.  Wink

     
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Blackthorne - 22 November 2013 11:36 AM

If you want to know just the story, just ask your friend who’s smarter than you and better at adventure games than you.  I’m sure they’d relay a good story.

Bt

I would love to hear that again in, ahem.. Vohual’s voice !

     

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Zifnab made a good comment early on, so let’s define exactly how something like this would work. I’m thinking of clicking something that enables a sort of “autoplay”, i.e. from that point on the game plays itself for you until you tell it to stop. That way you don’t lose any context you’d have gained while solving puzzles so the game is still experienced as a game - but without the solving part.

There were multiple comments made regarding how this would ruin games forever and how if someone doesn’t like puzzles he can go play in the sand: since this feature is optional, I really don’t see the problem. I was just thinking this would be a way to increase the appeal of adventure games to people who currently don’t enjoy them due to the feeling of getting stuck, while still allowing all the current fans the experience they’d receive today. Also people seem to be making the assumption you must either never use this feature or use it for entire games at once, which is not necessarily the case.

So, given that and trying to stay on-topic, do you think something like this can be considered to detract from a game containing it and why?

     

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