People live and spend their whole lives solving the mysteries of the world.

Since the word "game" appeared, puzzle solving elements can be flexibly applied to various entertainment activities. Now it is widely used in games, either to help the game create a variety of immersive atmosphere, or to directly increase the playability of the game, or to bring a better balance to the game rhythm.

Like spices, educational elements can have completely different tastes in the hands of different people. But in fact, the puzzle itself is actually the same.

Various mechanisms are strange, but in the final analysis, they are all classic types: finding differences, finding things, symbol/number substitution, clue/fragment splicing information reprocessing, 2D/3D pushing boxes, various Huarong roads, various water pipes/wires/light refraction, Tower of Hanoi/Tower of Hanoi games, Sudoku, skating, various chess, cards, puzzles and so on.

A version of Pokemon's classic ice road checkpoint (all roads can only be taken once to reach the destination)

These "puzzles" are good small games in themselves, and in the production of large-scale games, as long as these elements are added, the whole game will have a fuller and richer feeling, thus improving its own quality and playability.

This is the magic of the label "solving puzzles". No matter what the theme is, whether it is action or strategy, even hanging up, changing clothes, social games, etc. As long as you add the label "solving puzzles", the playability of the game will soar!

But why is this?

I often eat noodles recently. Take noodles as an example. If I want to make a plate of spaghetti, the combination of olive oil, tomato sauce, meat sauce and spaghetti itself can make the most basic spaghetti, and adding appropriate educational elements is like sprinkling chopped basil and black pepper on spaghetti, which can make this spaghetti more layered and memorable. To some extent, its function is more important than adding more side dishes.

Pure action games, such as Assassin's Creed series, have also integrated solving puzzles into daily parkour and underground exploration. This spaghetti can be said to be fragrant all over the world, and it is still a classic.

Magical puzzle game.

However, the magic is magical, and there is a problem that many players may have discovered long ago. The big label "solving puzzles" is actually in the game, but it can only play a supporting role in many cases. Almost all big productions, where the word "puzzle" is mentioned, will add the word "element" to become "an excellent XXX game with puzzle elements", in which XXX can be any game type, and the only constant is that XXX is the staple food and "puzzle" is always the seasoning.

A strange case in Hong Kong is a "classic" jumping and killing game, but it actually contains a lot of puzzles, which makes use of the fact that people will be twice frightened when jumping and killing while concentrating on thinking, and the effect is quite good.

Why is the puzzle, most of the time just seasoning? As far as I know, it is roughly like this:

First of all, we are always obsessed with all kinds of puzzles to varying degrees, enjoying the refreshing feeling of solving puzzles, but if the puzzles are too difficult, only frustration and anger are left.

After all, you can blame others for losing other games, but if the puzzle game loses, you can only blame yourself.

Well, sometimes simple happiness can solve all problems.

Secondly, the development of everything is an accumulation. If the accumulated amount is more, it will inevitably develop in an increasingly complex and higher direction. This is how things develop, especially the iteration of the puzzle.

Combining the above two points, the contradiction comes.

Suppose a player plays more than a dozen puzzles, and the answers contained in these puzzles are commonplace to him, then the player will need more difficult and unknown puzzles to make him feel happy to solve them. However, this "more difficult" puzzle game, if the puzzle content is quite complicated in order to make the old players feel the difficulty, then for other players who are new to the puzzle game, playing this game will become a "self-defeating" that makes people feel completely unsolvable.

"TheRoom" I believe many players have experienced it, and the humanistic allusions of astronomy and geography are all involved. It can be said that in the absence of a Raiders Guide, there are considerable requirements for players to accumulate horizontal knowledge, but the difficulty is still under control, and all kinds of related knowledge are superficial.

After all, a puzzle can be compared to a math problem.

If this question is a high number question, it will give him pleasure to answer for college students, but if it is answered by a junior high school student, the ending may not be very good. At the same time, a math problem of addition and subtraction, which can be solved by primary school students, can get the pleasure of success, but let college students solve it, and instantly hide the fox's face, even boring.

The most important thing is that the game itself is actually the result of independent choice, not to mention a considerable number of puzzle games need to be paid.

I believe that few people like to download a game on purpose or spend money to make themselves feel bored or depressed, and no one will pay for content that they may find too simple and boring.

In this way, for pure puzzle games, the difficulty setting has become an eternal double-edged sword.

It's too hard for no one to play, too simple for no one to play. What's more, like the author, I heard that this game is very hard-core, and it is not uncommon to throw it in the game library after buying it and never open it again.

BigFish, a series of puzzles, has been translated into a series of escape from the Chamber of Secrets in China. With the accumulation of hundreds of works, it has achieved excellent level difficulty and rhythm adjustment, but the following problems continue to stand out: the sense of sight is serious, and unrelated works are very easy to have a deja vu play experience because of the unification of streamline, which is called playing fatigue.

So the puzzle game can only be so embarrassing?

The answer must be no, everything has its own stage to shine, and puzzle games also have their own suitable roads. These roads are diverse, but only a few are known to most people for the time being.

First of all, what is the general definition of classic puzzle games?

Although puzzle games can be classified into this category, such as non-plot level, page clearance, etc., the puzzle games we generally refer to generally refer to puzzle PuzzleAdventure games with theme plots. The gameplay is mainly based on the elements that can be collected in the game, and various props and derivative gameplay are used to solve various puzzles to promote the plot. Finally, the players themselves integrate various pieces of information to shape the characters or improve the plot. Expressions can be written expressions, actions, and the most common image adventure puzzle games.

The following famous masterpieces can be classified as puzzles:

Monument valley, riddle, weak plot, 3D geometry, checkpoint, maze, small freshness, poetry, leisure.

This work has won many awards since its release. Both producers and players have begun to re-examine the definition of the word "game"

Machinarium has always occupied a place in the temple of steampunk, dim, hand-painted, plot, AVG, healing, independence and other puzzle games.

Rust lake series (or escape box series), dark series, humanity, plot, hand painting, eggs, absurdity and horror. The rust lake series comes from the producers' highly unified understanding and ideas of Shuangfeng. This is a niche puzzle game composed entirely of metaphors. However, due to the continuous expansion of its audience, it has completely become a classic series of puzzle games, and the word "rust lake" has gradually become the label of similar games. Others who enjoy the same treatment include Cairo and Soul Series.

On this basis, it is not difficult to think about why the current graphic adventure story puzzle game is regarded as "orthodox" by a large number of players. They all have similar frameworks.

It is a combination of the core of "solving puzzles" and other small and heavy characteristic words.

This practice can now be called mainstream. In recent years, quite a number of excellent puzzle solving games have been made on this basic model. Let's take a few domestic ones as simple examples:

Lost Island Series = Puzzle Solving+Hand Drawing+Brain Hole

"Mystery of the Ship" series = puzzle solving+thriller+humanity

Distant story = solving puzzles+feeling+hand drawing.

Paper wedding dress = puzzle+national style+thriller

The whole game of "Tales from afar" is very short, and the puzzle elements are relatively basic, but it also attracts many loyal fans. There is no bright story in the game itself, but emotional elements are added everywhere, which has caused many players to sing bad, and the negative evaluation of the game mainly focuses on the short process. The rhythm and duration of the puzzle game process is also a difficult factor to control.

"Paper wedding clothes" in

, astronomical instruments, books, and other related games, then even if Li Si is not described, players will use their existing knowledge to promote the understanding of Li Si, and cooperate with the plot to build a "real" Li Si far beyond the author's expressive ability.

The setting of the puzzle game should match the characters in the plot, which is the foundation of the foundation. Basically, no one will design a bunch of knowledge-related puzzles that only bankers, astronomers and other professions can understand, about the role of people as farmers. But many times, the following problems will appear: in a person's role as a professor of solitary history, design a puzzle similar to triangle = 1, square =5, and how much is triangle minus two squares. Is it unreasonable? It's not unreasonable, but embarrassing-why are there such obvious problems that senior intellectuals are not interested in around a history professor who lives alone? By contrast, is it better to design a question of the type shown in the above picture? This is the problem of quite a few puzzle games today.

Furthermore, the real content of the puzzle game should not be just some annoying level puzzles, but the puzzles of the game itself. Players can simply clear the customs, or they can complete many extra puzzles with various details to clear the customs. The results of these two methods can be completely different, or they can be expressed as different understandings of the same ending.

In this regard, I recommend you to watch The Dedication of Suspect X, and you may get some insight. After all, for people, the most real thing is the truth they know and are familiar with.

Okay, this is beside the point again.

In fact, there have been many games with different endings according to the players' different game progress, but these games are mainly presented in the form of text AVG.

The Night of Voicing is a typical text AVG, and the feedback that players finally get is to reach different endings according to different choices. In fact, there is no puzzle element in the game, but when exploring different text options to reach the ending, it is quite a puzzle-solving feeling.

Although the mystery of the ship 2 is still a little rough in some places, it is quite close to the author's idea in many places: there are two endings at the end, and the endings are obtained according to the completion of different game puzzles. At the same time, after the real ending, different players can get completely different derivative plots and different character settings under the same ending through different understandings of puzzles and clues in the game. Quite a few people feel like Hamlet.

In fact, the puzzle game has always been a very good story carrier.

Very suitable for adding all kinds of metaphors and associative information. Due to the need of customs clearance or collection, players will think and analyze all the details in the game, and try to click or consider the meaning of a graphic. Thanks to this, players rarely ignore important plot information in the puzzle game-if they don't collect this information and make a combination analysis, they will get stuck directly in an organ or a secret door.

This situation is rare in other types of games. I believe that when players are speeding in Need for Speed, they rarely care about what goods are sold in roadside shops, because knowing or not will not have any impact on the game at all.

Therefore, in non-puzzle-solving games, adding appropriate puzzle-solving elements will prompt players to carefully scrutinize the details from the side, thus obtaining a better game experience.

"Assassin's Creed", the strongest suit and dagger in the Brotherhood, needs to complete the challenges related to romulus's ancient tomb before it can be unlocked, and these contents are actually a manifestation of action puzzle solving. Players need to enter the dungeon at the wolf's head mark in the map, then complete the exploration and challenge of each dungeon (mainly climbing the wall), and finally get the strongest equipment, which indirectly improves the playability and plot fullness of the game. The Brotherhood has always enjoyed an epic reputation, which is not without reason.

Once again, let's go back to the original question, what is a puzzle game-a puzzle adventure game.

The current mainstream thinking. In fact, the theme of the puzzle is supplemented by narrative stories: let players actively (or passively) experience a good story with questions and thoughts, and carefully read a story that is worth spending time exploring and can lead to thinking.

On some levels, I think this is also the reason why many puzzle games are set at one or two hours. At the price of a cup of milk tea, the time spent watching a movie is spent on experiencing a niche but novel game, feeling completely different thinking and brain holes, so as to gain imagination outside of daily life, which is worth it.

This is not the enjoyment that ordinary popcorn movies can bring. Not to mention that popcorn is killing people now.

I have a movie ticket, but I have a good friend to watch it with.

In fact, there are many hours or even more than ten hours of game production on various platforms, but the overall performance, whether it is the work itself or the feedback from the players, seems to be somewhat insufficient.

For puzzle games, in addition to all other factors to be considered, there are also some "patience" related issues that always lead producers to try to fly high.

After all, there are many people who can understand Zhuge Liang's East Wind Burning Red Cliff, but few people can understand the complete works of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Solving puzzles requires patience, but patience, in some ways, can be regarded as one of the things we lack most besides money.