作者：Dan Marshall

这是我设计指向点击冒险游戏谜题时的思考过程。显然这个例子适用于相对简单的游戏。你最好根据自己游戏的实际情况来运用这个过程。

此类游戏的一大特征就是含有一个门。也就是阻止玩家从A点到B点的障碍。

门是相当无趣的东西。但其好处在于“门”只是“障碍”的一个比喻，它们可能是任何障碍而不仅仅是门。并且这些障碍也未必很具体，可以是火焰，带把斧子的疯子，坏脾的鞋子。它只需要是让你的玩家必须经历的一种情境内的物体。根据你的游戏情节，你应该不难想象出一种在故事中可行而有趣的“门”替代物。

point and click games(from nowgamer.com)

让我们先从火焰开始。火的动画较难实现，所以在真正的游戏开发过程中，从来不会用“火”做障碍。但在这里的例子中，它是可行的，因为我只是让你在脑海中想象它的游戏图像，并不需要真正做出效果。所以，我们的门就是一团火焰。人类无法穿过火焰，你必须将火熄灭。

那么，有什么解决方法呢？我们有数种穿过火焰的方兴未艾，但最明显的一种可能也是最佳方法——玩家希望能够轻松地判断问题，并自己想出解决方法。他们并不知道我们为其制作了多少个陷阱，但可能会想“用水浇灭火”。现在让我们想一个有趣的方法推动游戏进程。你将需要一些水，以及一个把水提到火源的水桶。

首先：如果可以的话，我们应该使用玩家库存中现成的道具。在冒险游戏中重用道具对于玩家来说是一个有趣而愉快的体验。

其次：水和水桶是无聊的道具。你可以在冒险游戏中做任何事情，所以不妨把它们做得更有趣一些。这是我在现实生活中很容易动手做到的事情，最好能够以更不寻常而有趣的方法进行一些变化。我并不想在游戏中玩一些我在现实的无趣生活中就可以接触到的东西，我想逃离现实！还有什么比水更好的主意呢？尿。比水桶更有趣的东西呢？一个挖空的猫头鹰残骸。那就让我们用猫头鹰残骸装些尿浇在火上。这就是一个谜题解决方案了。

最后，我们要为核心谜题增加一些层次。你可以持续增加层次直到谜题具有愉悦性为止。我们还可以想出多种方法将所有元素整合在一起解决将水浇到火上的谜题。

我们从何处得到尿呢？我们需要大量的尿，需要供应尿的来源，所以我们可能需要一只大象。如果大象已经撒尿了，那就不好玩了，所以我们需要的是一只急需撒尿的大象，但它却不肯撒尿，因为它很害羞，有只老鼠在盯着它看。所以，我们就得除掉这只老鼠。老鼠喜欢奶酪，即使是最笨的玩家也知道如果自己拿些奶酪放在老鼠面前会怎样。就是用奶酪把老鼠引开。但我们又要从哪取奶酪？奶酪就是老牛奶做成的不是吗？所以，我们在游戏中设置一个1945年的奶瓶（游戏邦注：假设这是一款穿越时间的游戏）并在现在将它挖出来。但这里就存在矛盾了，如果我们已经有了一个瓶子，我们就不需要水桶了，所以我们就要设置一只1945年的奶牛，现在它乳房中的牛奶就可以用来制作奶酪。这个方法可行！让我们在游戏场景中设置一把刀，玩家要找到把并拾取它，用刀割开老奶牛的乳房并取得所谓的“奶酪”。使用奶酪把老鼠引开。现在会发生什么情况？我们的大象终于开始尿了！要让游戏生效，就要让我们有时间去做这些事情，而大象也必须无限地撒尿。这没有什么不妥，因为它也的确想尿，不是吗？

现在来说说水桶的问题。

假设玩家的库存中已经有一只死猫头鹰了。那好，我们就用这一个。挖空的猫头鹰残骸可以做一个变形的水桶，对吗？所以我们只需将它掏空即可。

假设有一只秃鹰站在枝头上啄食猫头鹰肉。我们用猫头鹰诱使秃鹰去食用它的内脏，将其掏空并得到一个变形水桶。这里我们要添加一些可爱的层次。

这将我们引向另一个点，你想为改变谜题类型。我们可以在此进行一个对话谜题，添加一个动物园管理员。动物管理员经常给秃鹰喂食这种肉类，所以它拒绝食用我们的猫头鹰。所以我们就得同管理员交涉，以便我们将自己的猫头鹰献给秃鹰。我们得通过一个对话谜题说服管理员相信秃鹰长胖了，让他同意不再给秃鹰喂食，之后秃鹰就会开始挨饿。此时就用猫头鹰来诱惑它，这样它就会进食了，我们就得到这个变形水桶了！我们就用它来接大象尿，然后再浇到火焰上。玩家就可以继续游戏进程了。

等等。这些完全都是想象层面上的事情。其解决的关键在于设置路标，要标注这一路上的每个环节。看到管理员给秃鹰喂食猫头鹰肉，就可以让我们产生令秃鹰食用我们的猫头鹰这一联想。要设置路标！那么其他场景呢？要把大象设置为排队等着上厕所的情形，让它四肢交叉着冒汗。如果你看到它时，角色就必须说一些类似于“伙计，那大象要尿了。如果我能抓到它，就可以获得大量像水一样的液体了！”总之要用路标点明一切，只要谜题在你的游戏世界情境中合乎情理就行。

下一步：其中有些谜题并不可行！为什么秃鹰不会接受你的猫头鹰？你该如何让玩家知道可以用猫头鹰做一个类似水桶的东西？你可以想出无数种为之设置路标的方法。也许你可以把秃鹰改成其他东西？有什么动物会把内脏掏空只留下空壳呢？也许我们可以用巨大的坚果来代替猫头鹰？

当布置好所有设计时，可以对其中元素进行一些小调整，确保一切内容对玩家来说都具有趣味性和友好性。你并不想激怒玩家，你想让他们觉得自己很聪明。指向点击游戏如此有趣的部分原因就在于玩家和设计师之间这种感觉的联系——设计师为玩家布下许多陷阱，而玩家则进入设计师的大脑，试图预测和破解其大脑运行原理。

更直接的游戏会使用相同的过程将无聊的道具替换成较有趣的东西，创建层次。这是完全相同的过程，你只需要根据自己的游戏情境进行运用。（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）

How to Design Brillo Point and Click Adventure Game Puzzles

by Dan Marshall

Hello! A couple of times over the last week or so, the subject of decent Point n’ Click puzzle design has come up. This is the thought process I go through when designing puzzles. Pinch of salt, obviously, this example is for a relatively-silly game. You’d need to apply this process to something that applies to your game. Strap yourself in.

So, by the nature of the beast there’s a Door. A blockage. Something that’s stopping the player getting from A to B.

Doors are, by and large, pretty fucking dull. The good news is that “Door” is just a metaphor for “Obstruction”, they can be anything! And the Obstruction doesn’t have to be literal. A fire, a maniac with an axe, an anthropomorphised pair of shoes with a bad attitude. It just needs to be an in-context thing your player needs to get past. With the plot you’ve got, it shouldn’t be too hard to dream up an interesting Door substitute, something that works within the story.

Let’s go with fire. Fire is difficult to animate, so in Real Game Development, never ever go with “fire”. In this instance it’s fine, because I’m using your imagination to imagine all the game graphics in your head, I’m not having to do a single thing. So, our door is a fire. Humans can’t just walk through fire, the fire needs to be put out.

So, what’s the solution? There are a few ways getting past fire, but the most obvious one is probably the best to go for – players like to be able to easily identify the issue and work out for themselves what a likely solution is. They don’t know yet how many hoops we’re going to make them jump through, but they’re probably thinking “USE WATER ON FIRE”. Now let’s set about working out a fun way to progress. You’ll need some WATER, and a BUCKET in order to get the water to the fire.

First up: always use items the player will already have in their inventory if we can. Re-use of items in Adventure Games is a fun and satisfying process for the player.

Second: WATER and BUCKET are boring-as-fuck items. You can do ANYTHING in adventure games, so let’s make them more interesting. If it’s a thing I can get my hands on easily in real life, it often makes sense to change it for something more outlandish and interesting. I don’t want to play games with things I can touch in boring real life, I want some escapism! What’s better than water? PISS. What’s more-interesting than a bucket? A hollowed-out owl carcass. Let’s go with those! USE owl-carcass filled with piss on FIRE. Now THAT’S a puzzle solution.

Finally, we’re going to set about adding LAYERS to our core puzzle. You can keep adding layers until the puzzle is satisfying to complete. We’re going to have to dream up brillo and stupid ways of getting all the elements together for our WATER on FIRE puzzle.

Where are we getting our Piss from? We’ll need a lot of piss, and an inexhaustible supply of the stuff, so we’ll probably need an elephant. It’s no fun if the elephant’s already pissing, so let’s say we’ve got an elephant who desperately needs a piss, but refuses to because he’s… uh, shy? Because there’s a mouse looking at him. Ok, so we need to get rid of the mouse. Mice like cheese, even dumb players will know if they’ve got some cheese to try using it on a mouse. Use cheese on mouse to lure it away. Where do we get Cheese from? Cheese is old milk, right? So, let’s leave a milk bottle in 1945 (this is a time travel game, now, in your imagination) and dig it up in the Present Day. That’s problematic, because if we had a bottle we wouldn’t need a bucket, so let’s bury a COW in 1945 and by present day the milk in its udders will be cheese. That works! Let’s pop a knife somewhere in the scene for the player to find and PICK UP, and use the knife to cut open the OLD UDDER and grab the QUESTIONABLE CHEESE. Use
CHEESE on MOUSE to keep it happy. What happens now? Our elephant starts pissing! Hurrah! For the game to work, and to give us time to make this bucket, that elephant basically has to piss infinitely. That’s ok, because it really really needed a piss, right?

Ok, so BUCKET…. bucket.

Let’s say the player already has a DEAD OWL in their inventory. That’s good, we can use that one. A hollowed-out owl carcass would make a brillo makeshift bucket, right? We just need to hollow it out.

Let’s have a buzzard sitting on a perch, eating owl bits. Use OWL on buzzard to eat the innards, hollow it out and give us MAKESHIFT BUCKET. Bit easy, that. Let’s add in some of those lovely LAYERS.

This brings us to another point, you want to vary the type of puzzles. We could do with a Dialogue puzzle in here, so let’s add in a zookeeper. The zookeeper’s keeping the buzzard fed, which is why the buzzard is refusing our owl. So we need to stop him so we can offer up our own Owl to the Buzzard. So, let’s convince the zookeeper the buzzard is getting fat, through a dialogue puzzle. No idea what, that’s your job. Ultimately, the zookeeper agrees, stops feeding OWL BITS to the buzzard, and the buzzard goes hungry. Use OWL on Buzzard, get MAKESHIFT BUCKET! Use MAKESHIFT BUCKET on NEVER-ENDING STREAM OF PISS and then chuck it on our STUNNINGLY-ANIMATED FIRE. The player can progress!

Wait. When you put it like that that’s utterly mental. THE KEY to all this, obviously, is SIGNPOSTING. Every single fucking step of the way. See how the zookeeper is feeding Owl Bits to the buzzard? That creates a connection that the buzzard will eat YOUR owl you picked up in the last scene. Signposting! What else? Your elephant needs to be animated in a way that looks like he’s queuing for the toilet, legs crossed, sweating. If you look at him, the character needs to say something along the lines of “Man, that elephant needs a piss. If I could capture it, somehow, I’d have a bountiful supply of water-like liquid!”. Signpost EVERYTHING, and as long as the puzzle makes sense within the batshit crazy context of your game world, it’s all gravy.

NEXT: some of this puzzle doesn’t work! Why won’t the buzzard accept YOUR owl instead of its current owl bits? And how do you let the player know it’ll get a bucket-like thing out of it, rather than the buzzard just eating the whole thing? Consider that homework. There are a billion ways you can signpost all that. That’s design, I guess. Maybe change the buzzard for something else? What animals hollow things out but leave the shell? Maybe not an owl, then, maybe some sort of giant nut?

When the design’s all laid out, give the elements a little wiggle, make sure everything’s fun and friendly for the player. You don’t want to annoy them, you want them to feel *smart*. Part of what makes Point and Clicks such a joy to play is this feeling of connection between the player and the designer – the designer is laying these awful, awful traps for the player. The player is getting into the designer’s mindset, trying to predict and circumnavigate the way their brain works.

But you see how quickly a USE KEY ON DOOR puzzle can be unfurled into something much more interesting, with potentially many more funny lines of dialogue and animation? It’s this constant layering and re-jigging objects that make up the core of good point & click puzzle games.

Straighter (so, non-comedy) games will use the same process- swapping boring items for less-mundane ones, building up layers. It’s all the same process, you just need to work within the context of your game. （source：gamasutra）