Over the past week I have spent numerous hours reading and researching game design theory and puzzle design theory. I am by no means an expert (probably not even a novice yet), but I wanted to share links to some very helpful articles. I have not yet found a site with a good compilation of design and puzzle theory articles, so here is a list of great articles to read. I have read all of these and recommend them all.
I don’t agree with everything in these articles, but there are important bits and pieces to take from them all to help you form your own opinions and theories about game design and to help you build your own game world.
But first I will say, if you have not already heard of Chris Crawford, go read up about him now. His website has a wealth of game design info and the Journal of Computer Game Design he published for a number of years back in the 80′s and 90′s still contains a lot of relevant knowledge about game design.
Side tangent: In fact I might even surmise that the game designers of the 70′s-90′s are some of the best designers because they were not distracted by the pretty graphics of today’s generations. They had to design truly fun games, because they didn’t have pretty graphics to lean on. Also I think they had a lot more creativity too, because computers and games were still somewhat new at that time and there was not an established pattern or genre of game styles like there is today.
I think imagination had to play a major part in those older style games, where as in modern day games we try to visualize those imaginations through graphics rather than story/dialogue and implied existence (the idea that it exists, but we don’t have the technical abilities to visually show you, so you have to imagine what it looks like from our descriptions of it).
Whats fun about reading books is imagining the story in your mind. Whats fun about movies is imagining the parts of the story we did not see on screen. Whats fun about games is…seeing visual representations of our imaginations…that doesn’t sound exactly right?! That sound like we took the players mental investment out of the equation. Maybe we need to get back to letting the player imagine certain parts of the game for themselves again?
The Dragon Speech - One of the first things I would recommend to do if your researching game design and have not already watched it, is Chris Crawford’s speech at CGDC (GDC) back in 1993. I think in particular the 4th video about Characters is especially important and relevant.
Designing the Puzzle - A rather exhaustive list of puzzle designs can be found in Bob Bates GDC 1997 article.
Game Design - Theory And Practice: The Elements of Gameplay - Richard Rouse III’s excellent Gamasutra article about better applying puzzles to our game.
Puzzle Game Design - I especially like the 3 point “need to haves for planning” list from this Ludum Dare article. It also has some good article links in the comments for game design theories including MDA in particular.
Who Killed Adventure Games? - Old Man Murray’s Erik wrote this article and this is a fun read. I think his humor proves the article’s point quite nicely and is something all designers need to keep in mind when designing puzzles, and just games in general.
Why Adventure Games Suck - “Some people say that following these rules makes the games too easy to play. I disagree. What makes most games tough to play is that the puzzles are arbitrary and unconnected.” I think this is one of the key take aways from this article along with the great list of do’s/don’ts about game design. (Note: This is actually one of the articles from the above Journal of Computer Game Design)
Application of Puzzle Theory - This is a great read and really takes Bob Bates Puzzle Theory article and applies it with some examples. A great take away from this article is always reward the player for solving any puzzle whether it be a small reward like a new animation or a big reward such as unlocking a new location.
Designing and Integrating Puzzles in Action-Adventure Games - This is another great Gamasutra article. It focuses much more on a few core types of puzzles than the other articles, but has a lot more depth to them. This is a must read article.
If Not Puzzles… What? - “The reason so many adventures get it so wrong so often is that puzzles are so contrived.” and “If I had my way, every adventure game developer would be forced to play A Link to the Past to expand their puzzling horizons.” are some of the many key take aways from this thorough article about diversifying puzzle types in adventure games by Jack Allin.
Puzzles, what are they good for? - “I think that simply asking the question: “how does this puzzle serve the overall experience” is bound to be a good start.” I think that quote best summarizes the entire article. Its about determining whether the puzzle should be there or not. It focuses on the “why” of the puzzle rather than the how.
The below links are more great articles from http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/ that I have not read, but will be reading.
- High-Level Storytelling Design
- Goals and Storytelling
- Puzzles in horror games. Part 7 (Note: this is a 7 part series on puzzles/story telling and this link contains links to the other 6 parts)
Adventure Developers website which has since closed its doors is still available through Wayback Machine and has a good number of articles that you can still read. I have not read any on there yet, but plan to and when I do, there will definitely be another blog post about them.
I plan to do a twitch stream tonight to talk about some of my new ideas and directions for our Gopher game, based heavily on what I have read in these articles.