作者：Matthew Yeoman

最近我阅读了Toni Sala一篇名为“Game Design Theory Applied: the puzzle of designing a puzzle game.”的优秀文章。其总结道，因为4大主要问题，谜题不能被当成游戏，至少对于某些人而言是这样的。

这对于我这种身处典型行业外部的人来说刚好达成了共鸣。我致力于Puzumi Puzzles，在此我们创造的是那些能让你移动手指的谜题。我们将自己当成是创造性谜题分销商——我们的谜题与拼图游戏并不相同。

jigsaw puzzles(from puzzlemachine)

关于谜题作为游戏的四大问题

谜题拥有四大问题：

它们遵循了一个优势策略—-这是游戏开发者所避免的内容

它们并未遵循经典的游戏机制—-你必须改变自己的看法才能解决它们

它们只有一种解决方案—-它们不具有许多通向成功的解决方法

它们不具有重玩性—-当你知道如何解决谜题时，你便不会想要再玩一次

Toni提出了许多不同的方法去解决这些问题，并同时遵守着典型的谜题范式。虽然我是一名游戏设计师，但却是一名谦逊的谜题创造者，所以我想要提供的讨论内容是关于谜题类型的横向思考。

如何解决这四个问题而在游戏中使用谜题

Toni通过创造一些全新且有趣的方法去解决这四个问题从而有效地使用谜题，即介绍一个奖励系统，并通过改变难度曲线而创造一个更棒的整体体验。

通过对于我们的谜题的研究，并尝试着玩我们的谜题，我建议你能够创造不只有一个解决方法，并且能够跳脱传统谜题理念而创造出重玩性的谜题。

我发现传统谜题所具有的问题便是它们都是围绕着一个解决方法进行设计。拼图游戏便是如此—-几乎所有人在听到实体谜题时都会想到拼图。

我们的谜题就并未遵循只有一种解决方法的典型谜题范式，这么做不仅能够推动游戏玩法的多样性，同时还能提高游戏的重玩性。这主要是取决于我们谜题的设计—-它们具有许多可交替的等积异形能够引导着它们产生不同的解决方法。

让我们尝试着搞清楚这一让人迷惑的建议

我想要提供的是带有这一同样功能且适当设计的游戏中的谜题，或能够被称为游戏的谜题。我并非游戏设计专家，但难道带有与《新推箱子》类似设计的游戏就不能同时具有多个可游戏的等积异形组块，基于不同的结构相匹配，并在游戏面板上进行替换吗？这将提供给谜题许多解决方法，提高重玩性，甚至有可能打破优势策略问题。

从根本上说，我建议我们可以不再将谜题看成是在一个方形游戏面板上只带有一个解决方法的2D结构内容，而是将它当成是一些使用可替换的等积异形而具有更多解决方法的动态内容。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Another Thought on Game Design Theory and Puzzles

by Matthew Yeoman

I recently read an excellent post by Toni Sala titled “Game Design Theory Applied: the puzzle of designing a puzzle game.” You can click on over if you want, but the summary is that puzzles are not considered to be games, at least by some folks, due to four main issues.

This struck a bit of a chord with me as I work from outside of the typical industry of people here. I work for Puzumi Puzzles, we make those puzzles that you have to move with your hands. We consider ourselves to be creative puzzle distributors – we have little in common with jigsaw puzzles.

The four proposed problems with puzzles as games

The problems posed in the article are that puzzles have four main issues:

They follow a dominant strategy – something game developers avoid

They do not follow typical game mechanics – you have to change your perception to solve them

They only have one solution – they lack multiple pathways towards success

They are not replayable – the desire to replay leaves once you know how to solve it

You can read this in more detail in the post itself, but that is the summary. Toni comes up with a number of different ways to get around these issues while still staying within the typical puzzler paradigm. What I’d like to offer up for discussion, I’m no expert when it comes to game design as I am but a humble puzzler, is a bit of lateral thinking on the puzzle genre.

How to get around the four issues of using puzzles in games

Toni brings up a number of ways to get around the four points above by creating new and interesting ways to use puzzles, introducing a bonus system, and making for a better overall experience by changing the difficulty curve.

What I’m proposing from what I’ve learned from researching our puzzles, and playing with our puzzles, is that you can create a puzzle that doesn’t have one solution and that is replayable by stepping outside of the traditional puzzle idea.

The problem, I find, with traditional puzzles is that they are designed to have only one solution. The jigsaw puzzle is what has caused this – nearly everyone think of jigsaws when they think of a physical puzzle.

Our puzzles do not follow the typical puzzle formula of only having one solution, this varies game play and increases replayability. This is possible due to how our puzzles are designed – they have many interchangeable polyforms that lend themselves to having many different solutions.

Let’s try and make sense of this puzzling proposal

What I’d like to offer is that puzzles within games, or puzzles that are games, can have this same feature with the right kind of design. Again, I’m not a game design expert, but couldn’t a game with a design similar to New Sokoban have multiple polyform pieces in play at once, that can fit together in different configurations, and that are interchangeable across the game board? This would offer multiple solutions as to how the puzzle is solved, increase replayability and maybe even break up the dominant strategy problem.

Basically, what I’m proposing is that we stop looking at puzzles as 2D constructions with one solution within a square game board, and look at puzzles as something more dynamic with multiple solutions built in to it by using interchangeable polyforms.

I’d like to hear from the rest of the community. Maybe such a game already exists and I don’t know it, maybe my concept is completely flawed, or maybe you’re working on a similar game! I turn it over to your eternal wisdom…(source:gamasutra)