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Figuring it out: Puzzles in Games
38 Plays1 year ago
Join Dave and Jake as they apply wit and persistence to figure it all out in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Sonic CD - Quartz Quadrant Zone - Past (US)
Outro:
- Sonic CD - Quartz Quadrant Zone - Bad Future (JP/EU)
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Transcript
Gateway Games: "It Takes Two" and Accessibility
00:00:43
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going pretty good. Nice.
00:00:56
Speaker
Moving beyond it. No, I'm doing all right. We're sticking. We're sticking in there as the old folks stay or can't complain, you know, but but I will. But I will. Know that I have the aptitude and the ability.
00:01:12
Speaker
um But I just want to jump straight into it. Immediately prior to us starting the record, you were talking about it takes two and recent experiences with it. And see, I thought that when we played that game together, that was it, right? Like you weren't going to find another two to take to it.
00:01:34
Speaker
I'll be honest, this will be like the the third or fourth time I've been ah playing through this game. Oh, no. Because I don't know, it's a it's a really fun co-op experience and someone's like never played it. Like we should play it. It's fun. um I just try and like let the other person lead as far as what to do. I might try and be like, gee, I'm standing over here. I wonder what that could mean and let them piece it together if they're stuck.
00:02:01
Speaker
Um, but yeah, it's been really fun to go through again. Um, when I continue this weekend, we're at the the toy level, which is so good. It's really good. So good. It really is just an excellent game. So I can understand playing through it. It's also kind of like, um, you know how people used to say, maybe they still do that. Like marijuana is a gateway drug. Like it takes two is a gateway game.
00:02:31
Speaker
I can, I can see that, but it's also like, so I actually don't know all that much about drugs, but assuming that there's some sort of tier list, right? And you're working your way up to the good stuff.
00:02:44
Speaker
um Marijuana if that's an treat here and you're like, okay, it's not good enough for me anymore Like I really need the good stuff and so you move on to like harder drugs um If that's the way that it's perceived to work the issue with its takes it takes two fitting into that analogy is it's also just like ah a Really good game like it's kind of hard to be like now that I'm done with this. Let's play another better game, right? Well, I mean How do I answer this without incriminating myself? um Yes, It Takes Two is very good, but as far as like mechanically, it's not the most involved. I guess that's fair to say. As far as lore and stuff, like um I think it's a really good story, very solid. Everything works together very well, um but it's not like the most story rich or like the deepest lore compared to something like near automata, which would be
00:03:41
Speaker
it's It's a lot in comparison to it takes to write. Yeah, as far as mechanically with the combat um falling with the fucks going on and then replaying the game several times so um because like I I don't I know you're not arguing against this, but I would argue that for it's to it takes to like you mentioned it's not story driven necessarily like story rich, but it is like character driven, right? Like the reason that it sticks so well is because these people are interacting in meaningful ways because i think like the overarching plot could basically be like a sentence or two yeah i'm just like i'm not trying to cast any shade at it because i do think it is really good i like the story i like the thing i'm just saying it's not as deep as other games right like if i compare this with divinity original sin 2 you're like
00:04:36
Speaker
Well, yeah, um this one's obviously a lot longer. Therefore, you need to have more character writing, more story, more points to go off of that connect through the acts and <unk> etc et cetera, et cetera. Right. That one's more grand campaign story as well as character driven story and stuff like
Balancing Game Complexity with Player Lifestyle
00:04:53
Speaker
that.
00:04:53
Speaker
But I still think it is good as a quote unquote gateway game because like you can figure out moving around and like an interact button, right? Yes. Obviously, you will need more than that at a point, but it doesn't feel insurmountable. Even from the box, you're like, oh, this looks friendly, family friendly. Yeah. Versus something like a a Dark Souls or like a JRPG that has It's like you need to already be in that genre to really want to check out those games. Right. Yeah. You mentioned like the simple interact buttons or something like that. And it's really easy to forget as people who play games a lot, like.
00:05:36
Speaker
how much of a barrier to entry literally hitting buttons is for people who don't play video games at all. You have to look down at your hands to see where the button is before you press it. ah Yeah. And then you have games that like not only require you to know the buttons, but maybe they require them in quick combinations. You get like a quick time event or combos or something like that. like We have years and years and years of complexity stacked on top of, we kind of assume that you already have the muscle memory for this.
00:06:06
Speaker
Um, and yeah, it's, it's nice that it doesn't require all of that. It's very forgiving from a failure retry standpoint. Um, it's good. Yeah. Ambassador game. I'd say like that. Maybe Minecraft Minecraft's good for it. Yeah.
00:06:29
Speaker
Take three down, one up. That's it, you done? I'm locked in for the night. um No, it's just a lot of... You need something that's going to be not too mechanically complex. And if they do fuck up or fail, that they're not heavily punished for it. Because if you're trying out something new, and then they slap like a ruler on your knuckles every time,
00:06:58
Speaker
You're not going to be like, oh, I should do it perfectly next time. You're going to be like actively stressed that you're going to fuck up again and get more ruler slaps. Or in the case of translating to a video game, maybe you just leave. Why would I continue to sit here and be slapped with a ruler? Yeah, it just I don't know. It should be engaging and rewarding, but there has to be a bit of that ramp up for newer people. That's fair.
00:07:28
Speaker
I mean even beyond um you beyond It Takes Two, it's very funny cause like Call of Duty, I know.
00:07:37
Speaker
but i they They aim to be this like military simulator type action game, all this stuff. But you could make a very strong argument that one of the reasons it was so successful, especially the newer ones, are because it's very easy to get into from a casual perspective. It's like, oh, you you didn't move away from the grenade? Well, here's your war cro more quote, and we're going to like move you back one minute to the last checkpoint, and you can just do it again.
00:08:04
Speaker
Um, so games have learned a lot from that, but I mean, I'm, as I, as I age, as I get older, I'm good with the optional hard path and then otherwise just enjoying my time with the game. It doesn't have to always be a slug.
00:08:23
Speaker
No, definitely not. And also as time commitments become more of a thing, like I remember talking to my uncle and my uncle and aunt are dinks, dual income, no kids. So like they have a house and they have like video game systems and like a huge TV or multiple TVs because they had this disposable income to use and I was like, Oh, you must be playing like video games all the time. And they're like, no, it's been actually a little bit since we've really, I'm like, what, how could you, but now that I'm an adult and have responsibilities, I still have a fucked up a free time. I gave him all the time. I was getting a hard G game. I can't understand it. But now like, I understand like there are other things you do with your time, other obligations, responsibilities, or just,
00:09:13
Speaker
work or doing something else, right? yeah It could be any number of things. um So if you can get like a shorter block of time where you can, oh, if I need to just do it for 20 minutes, and then I get a call. Okay. I can either pause it or do it in chunks as well. That is really nice. Being able to pause a game, I think in and of itself is very needed for a lot of things.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah, we've come a long way since like Commander Keen and hey, we have like a code you need to look up in a book. I don't know. So I don't know if Commander Keen literally had level codes because it had more persistence than that, but I know that you did have to like look up words in the manual as their DRM.
Navigating Game Mechanics: Challenges for Newbies
00:10:00
Speaker
That was their anti DRM was like, you have the physical manual, right? So if we tell you to go to page 52 and look at paragraph three, word four, yeah that's the code, right? Um,
00:10:10
Speaker
Which is very funny. Like literally only works in a pre-internet world, but history is interesting and like that. But there were other games where it was like, well, we gave you a level code. Hope you wrote that down so you can come back to this. Or, and um, there have been.
00:10:27
Speaker
ah Sorry, I was going to say, um yeah, I know I definitely have shared this at some point before, but back in the days of Mega Man on the Super Nintendo, and after you would complete a level, it would show you these little worker robots in the game. And then they're like, they'd have numbers. And I think the worker robots were above the numbers and occasionally like they would kind of like pop up out of their helmets. um And I was like, oh, it's the order that they pop up in. Hmm.
00:10:55
Speaker
So I was writing down like 30, 40, 50 numbers, and it's literally just the numbers that are already there, like left to right, top to bottom. And it was like, hey, it's just these 16. Yeah, I was like, that makes more sense. That makes a lot more sense. I mean, that's an interesting lesson, though, because I would argue like.
00:11:20
Speaker
You were doing it fine, right? That's an issue in readability coming from the game. Yes. And that they weren't really portraying it. Like the example I can think of for my go-to example for read readability in gaming is Mirror's Edge, obviously. And it's just like chase red.
00:11:36
Speaker
Um, and they ah had that in the early development where they're like chase red, but that actually wasn't enough. They also had to desaturate so much else in the world so that you could continue to easily pick out red and follow it. Um, and that's kind of the example of what you said reminded me of that where it's like.
00:11:59
Speaker
They had the numbers, but since there was other busy stuff going on on the screen, that's actually what captured your attention. Yeah. It's one of those things where like. If somebody is ignorant of the rules in play, they're going to make an assumption one way or the other. Could be correct. Could also be wrong. Yeah. I still remember a time where I had somebody over and they were trying Celeste. Like, oh, it's fun. You just got to use these buttons. And it's just, you'll figure it out. No worries. And they immediately like jumped on spikes. I'm like, did you not see the spikes? They're like, oh, I didn't realize that was spikes. I thought it was just.
00:12:38
Speaker
pointy terrain. And in my head, my mind's boiling, I'm seething, because I couldn't understand. But for them, it was a completely new thing. And it didn't read as spikes to them, right? Yeah. Right. Because we have all of these video game associations with spikes. Yes. You have Sonic the Hedgehog, right? Hates spikes notoriously. All of these other platform, pretty much most platforming games at some point have spikes in them.
00:13:08
Speaker
and so it's like yeah you see spikes obviously a bad idea if you ever really wanted to screw with platform gamers you just make it so you have to walk on spikes and they'll never progress they'll become games journalists instantly okay oh but i think that is one of those things where If you're new to gaming, it's got to be a bitch to just even navigate a game. Like if it's a 2D side scroller, obviously it's very limited in the options you can take. yeah And you probably find the right one pretty quick quickly. But in like a 3D game.
00:13:40
Speaker
um As an experienced gamer, you might be like, oh, this is like a parallax background or this is the skybox or this is the invisible wall. OK, I can't go here, but I can go other places ah versus if somebody is just hopping into a game, they see the scenery of the world and they're like, can I go over there or is that? So they literally have to kind of like hug the edge of certain things. They see where they can go.
00:14:08
Speaker
I will say this is one of the kudos to um mini maps is it literally has like hard edges for like, hey, you can't go past to here. And it has like your little player arrow up there. Yeah, you sacrifice like a little bit of immersion in most games that have it because you're just like super imposing HUD where they could just be looking at the world. But that being said, freaking love mini maps and so many games needed it like.
00:14:34
Speaker
Like marathon is a really ah early game I think that had it but they had like labyrinthine levels and all of this nonsense and if you couldn't um Didn't have a mini map it would have just been hell it would have been terrible um I'm there. I'm sure that the first people who went from like early doom where they couldn't have like overlapping under lapping areas to like full 3d spaces like lost their minds and Cause if you played like a ton of doom and you're like that, you just can't, you don't have to worry about whether this terrain is above other terrain. And suddenly you do such a problem, right? It could be such an issue. I actually ran into that issue personally with shadow of the earth tree. Like there's a lot of underpasses kind of going between areas. And it got to the point where like,
00:15:21
Speaker
the map itself wasn't very useful to me when I was trying to figure out new places because I was like, I don't know where these connective areas are, you know? Yeah, I literally had to ask you, hey, how the fuck do I get to the ruins? And you're like, oh, this one place. And it was I think if you were to do like a fog of war heat map, it was like the one place I did not go. It was just in this one corner and was like, Jesus Christ.
00:15:50
Speaker
That's one thing I actually appreciate. I'm going to give them a little bit of kudos to the the new Zelda's Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is they have like a ah they have a trail. You leave like a breadcrumb trail when you go places on the map and you can choose to like basically replay it to see where you've been all the way back to, I think, the start of the game.
00:16:14
Speaker
It's not all visible by default normally because you'd just be covering the map in nonsense, but you can choose to replay it all the way back and see like everywhere you've gone in the game and then see where you haven't been.
00:16:27
Speaker
Yeah, I wouldn't mind something like that like um, if it's a big map just using more incremental fog of war Because obviously in eldering once you get a map thing it opens up a whole section of the map But it's not showing you where you've already been um And things like Hollow Knight you need to have little markers to be like, this thing is here. I've already been over here. Yeah. Because it never feels good to have to go back and check everything like you're an insane person. Was I here? Okay, let's cross that off the list. Was I here? Let's cross that off the list.
00:17:03
Speaker
it's the um it's the gameplay that like i think that really emerged from adventure games of like okay you need to try like everything oh you got a new piece well now try everything again revisiting seeing if it works and you're like i hate this so much I will always appreciate King's Quest from a nostalgia standpoint, but fuck off from that game design. yeah It is terrible. It's really good. You can easily run into situations where you don't have all the components you need.
00:17:38
Speaker
But you're not going to know that unless you do a lot of trial and error.
Game Difficulty and Player Engagement
00:17:42
Speaker
I think in King's Quest, is it seven or five? Somewhere between five, six and seven, there's like a really the most common or popular one. You go to this island and you run into these three dwarves. One of them senses by smell, one of them senses by sight, one of them senses it by like taste. But you need like these different things to essentially fool them.
00:18:06
Speaker
But you need three of those things and to give them in like the the correct order. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But if you just go there for the first time, they just kill you and you have to kind of figure it out. Right. Right. Yeah. No, it's we've talked about accessibility in games and even within this episode. And it's I'm i'm so much in favor of accessibility versus not um like give people the option.
00:18:35
Speaker
And if people want to just like bang their head against the wall for some of these old puzzles, they absolutely can, but like make it optional. um That's one of the things I really liked about God of War is like, you can play that is a very difficult game. Absolutely can. And I played it on like hard difficulty or something like that and got my face smashed in multiple times on some of those hard fights.
00:19:00
Speaker
Or, if you really don't want to play it like that, it has so many accessibility options to just make it like, if you just want the story, great. Kratos is awesome. You can't make him unawesome. He's going to win, right? so We gave Kratos a gun. It's traffic gun to his back and he bends over and fires.
00:19:22
Speaker
But yeah, even since you mentioned God of War, um having things where Atreus is like, hey, I wonder if we could use that boat for something. ah Just like a little, hey, you've been kind of at the spot for a little bit.
00:19:35
Speaker
we're going to kind of like lightly nudge you in the right direction. And they actually, I'm pretty sure, I know that you can disable it. I know you can disable those hints, those convey companion hints, if you really want to like figure it out yourself. But I think they even let you specify how early the hints can come in, which is like a crazy amount of configuration. So it's like, oh, the game detected that you reached a puzzle. Start the 30-second countdown, or start the two-minute countdown, right?
00:20:02
Speaker
um Cause there were times I didn't screw around with that setting. Um, there were times I was like, I think I'm really close to it. And then Atreus is just like, this looks like Pythagorean's theorem. Like we could, you're like, shut up. I was right there. And I could just see that interaction. also great greatness It's just like, I was so close. I never finished basic math. Silence bully. Uh,
00:20:27
Speaker
Yeah, it is. It's something I might have liked more in the past. We're just figuring out everything for myself. um Again, going back to King's Quest, there is I think a desert portion where you have to explore the desert, but you can only go like so many spaces before you dehydrate and die. So you need to find an oasis.
00:20:51
Speaker
Now, imagine you could go in literally any of the cardinal directions and you have to find an oasis. ah So you literally start drawing on a piece of paper like, hey, I tried this path. Hey, I tried.
00:21:05
Speaker
And again, I didn't hate that at the time, but now I do not have the patience for it. That's it is. Yeah, it feels like. The technology has advanced and we I guess adventure games in that sense are less common. Yeah, we don't have as many spy foxes as we used to.
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of I don't I wouldn't say the genre is dead, but it is not the flourishing but genre at all. Like, I mean, I haven't played it something like that recently enough to say, but another grievance kind of or related to what you're saying as far as like trying all these pieces together is.
00:21:48
Speaker
They don't necessarily establish a rule.
Puzzle Design: Intuition vs. Frustration
00:21:51
Speaker
Hmm. So in your head, you might be thinking, oh, well I can definitely put these two pieces together. Yeah. And then it doesn't let you, but it then it lets you put two other things together where it's like, oh, crowbar and an egg. Oh, you lightly tap the egg with a crowbar. It opens and now you have the yolk, which you needed. And you're like, what? Why can't I just give them the egg and they'll crack the egg? Right. Yes. Yeah.
00:22:15
Speaker
It's arbitrary. Some of the solutions, they felt very arbitrary. And it goes against the principle, I think we've talked about in the past, which is the... um When it comes to puzzles, like in a tabletop game, and in a video game, in a movie, where it's like there's an unknown that's being slowly revealed, you want the audience, the player, the participant, whatever, to... You want them to solve it right before the solution is presented.
00:22:45
Speaker
because that's the maximum mental payoff is it started off very difficult. They didn't have all the pieces. You started to give them pieces, but not enough. And for them to just like outright solve it, unless they were like,
00:23:00
Speaker
actual Sherlock in real life sort of situation. Um, but then you give them a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more until you gu come up to where it's going to actually be revealed. And then you drop all of the foreshadowing pieces and pay off and all of that stuff so that they figure it out. And to take it back to the video game issue you're describing, when you just like try a combination of items until I can figure it out, what you're doing is you have no idea what the solution is until you happen to stumble across it. And then the game tells you, this was the solution. Wasn't that a cool puzzle that we put together? And you're like, no. No, it absolutely wasn't. Because the solution to the puzzle was use hammer on egg. And I had no idea why I did that. It was the last thing I tried. Yeah.
00:23:50
Speaker
If you're ever just doing something completely blindly, there's definitely been a miscommunication or misunderstanding along the way. And it's usually going to be the fault of the game for not conveying it yeah in a way that's not going to be ambiguous. Yeah, you got to be careful about putting players in situations where they need to guess.
00:24:11
Speaker
um Because that's the least fulfilling payoff you can get. Because they don't know why they're guessing. Do you remember do you remember that one puzzle in Remnant 2?
00:24:25
Speaker
i No, I probably blocked this one out. It was basically like you're looking at the different tombs. Oh, yeah. Yep. And our main issue was like finding out what the the rules were ah to solve that. Because you're like, oh, well, it has to be in this one book.
00:24:45
Speaker
It was, um but like we went between like four to 10 different theories before we like we went back, started from scratch, and we're like, oh, there's actually, oh, okay. This is what they're asking for. Was it the color of the funeral shroud? Was it the shape of the symbol on the funeral shroud? Was it a state of being able to see like the corpse or not? like They had too many variables and they didn't let you, I think if I were to redesign that and be smart and try to make it better.
00:25:21
Speaker
I would allow people to use the information that you definitely presented to them to lock in more information that they can use. right If you want like a multi-stage puzzle, that's fine. But you want them to be able to use the information they have to get more information, even if that let that information isn't the solution at the end of it.
00:25:40
Speaker
I almost said final solution, but that's a different thing. um Yeah, it's nice to have incremental things, I guess. So you can know like if you're in the right direction. Right. I hate to use this example, but fucking wordle. um Yeah. Part of the nature of the game, but if you... It's like, hey, ah this letter is correct, or this letter is correct, but it's not in the correct spot.
00:26:06
Speaker
Exactly. That's information you can use to help deduce and move you forward. Versus, is it penis? No. Is it water? No. And I can't think of a way to find what it works. That's it, yeah. I guess we'll come back next week.
00:26:23
Speaker
Penis? No. Water? No. All right. What are these things? Stumps me again.
00:26:30
Speaker
Yeah. no Something like that just to measure your progress, really. Yeah, to give people some like intuition payoffs as well, right? like The partial success. I think wordles are a really good example, because I was thinking of other examples in video games. like If it's a combination lock or something like that,
00:26:52
Speaker
and you show people that pretty much the same information you'd show them in Wordle or like some the audio audio cue or something like that a piece is locking into place like We're just talking about puzzles now at this point, but like legitimately they can be the worst part of a game if it takes you out of it. Um, and I don't even know if game facts is around anymore. all right So ah like needing to Google something in order to continue to play the video game that you were previously immersed in and invested in is the worst experience. So don't do that. Yeah. Um, in general, I don't think I want.
00:27:34
Speaker
puzzles for a lot of my games, unless it's an optional thing. Hey, can you figure out the riddle of the spinks? If so, we'll give you this bonus reward or thing. But if you don't want to bother with that shit, cool, you don't have to. Right. Cool. Thank you. Let me do that. And that's true. Because I know you you hate Talos principle. It sucks.
00:27:59
Speaker
But certain things it's fun to explore and come back to. I'm thinking of something like Mario Odyssey. A lot of that stuff is going to be trial or puzzle based or you have to kind of explore and figure things out. Yeah. That's what the game is. So it feels rewarding when you you've you've done it. Right. Yeah. Versus if something's like.
00:28:26
Speaker
I'm trying to think what I played recently enough that I would have this ah control. I was playing some again, and then it's like, hey, there's you got to get these five key cards in the right order. Even though I had played and beaten the game before, I had forgotten ah how that was done. And then I did it. And then I had to look up a YouTube video to be like, what the fuck am I missing? yeah And it felt bad because the story of that game is interesting. The action, the moment-to moment to moment gameplay is very fun and engaging. And then they're like, do you like puzzles? I'm like, where did this come from?
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, it's honestly so like as people know, like I play D and&D and I've run D and&D in games like that. And um puzzles are.
Tabletop Puzzles and Escape Room Dynamics
00:29:13
Speaker
They are potentially the most toxic thing you can like introduce into your game, like legitimately towards gameplay, towards progress, towards ah pacing. It's so dangerous to be like, hey,
00:29:29
Speaker
Is everyone here at the table smart today? right Are you guys awake? Here's this. I hope I didn't fail to convey some information. That's really important for you. I hope that you're thinking about things the same way I'm thinking about things. Um, and if not, then expect to spend an hour not making any progress. Have fun. Goodbye. People don't want to give up, right? Or maybe they don't have the option to give up. Maybe this is mandatory progression puzzle. Yeah, terrible.
00:30:01
Speaker
Do you remember doing escape rooms when that was a thing? Yeah, it still is technically. It just lessened the zeitgeist. But I saw one that was actually near near us as as an aside. Yeah, there's like two of them set up very close to us. and it was like We actually have two in town by me. I think I've been to both of them for separate um bachelor parties. It makes them easier for the future.
00:30:26
Speaker
um But like the worst thing is like when you're trying to put these pieces together and your brain just makes a valid enough assumption, but a wrong assumption. Yeah. And then you're burning so much time off of something that is not correct to solve the puzzle. Yeah. But that's in your tautology of things as far as you're aware. So you keep doing the same things under that assumption. Yeah. You have like corrupt evidence, basically. Yeah. Yeah.
00:30:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's the worst Like It's like trying to do those I spy puzzles where you have to like unfocus your eyes by the way, I I'm sure it says before but like I don't believe that they actually work or exist because I Struggle with it and very very much. So what's the what's the puzzle? How is it supposed to work?
00:31:21
Speaker
So like you know those eye spy books where you essentially it shows an image or a pattern? But you have to um unfocus your eyes. or like I think the trick was usually like if you look at close one eye, look at your nose, and just try and focus on that point. So your focus is on your nose.
00:31:43
Speaker
but you're not focused on the picture in the background. But because of that, you are able to identify an image. I see. Gotcha. But it's like trying to do something like that, but you don't have the ability to unfocus your eyes. Like you're constantly looking at things the exact same way.
00:32:02
Speaker
And you're always going to just be in that repeating cycle. Yeah. It's dumb. And it's, I'm i'm glad that it takes two does not have much. Oh, it takes two. Yeah. yeah No, I mean like I feel like that was fair. I put in the the notes like this is it. This is the puzzle episode. We finally got it um because Yeah, I agree and there's ways like smart puzzles can make people feel intelligent and like they figured it out and it's all about
00:32:37
Speaker
people knowing when they do or do not have information and being having the same paradigm as the people who created the puzzle. um If you fail on either of those fronts, you're going to have a really bad time because people can just end up somewhere completely differently. Do we want to shit on the witness now or later?
00:33:01
Speaker
I mean always, um but I just really dislike The Witness. yeah I will always have an appreciation for puzzle games, but still, if if I'm finding it frustrating or a pain in the ass,
00:33:16
Speaker
where there's like such a barrier to entry for solving like a certain mechanic when they're not explaining anything. And it's more frustrating than like fun of the the journey than I'm just out. I only think I got a couple hours in The Witness. I'm like, nope, we're good. I don't know if we ever had a dedicated episode on The Witness or not.
00:33:40
Speaker
Which means, maybe I've never said this, but I freaking hate the witness. It goes back a minute. to where i um and specifically because of It's such a good example. I'm glad you brought it up. Specifically because of me reaching a point in the game where the game thought I understood something that I didn't understand. yeah And I was just like, well,
00:34:02
Speaker
It's basically like if you were in preschool and the teacher just like showed up and I was like, here's a snack and then just left and then later came back and was like, and what did we learn today? And I'm like, I like snacks. So like, nope, that's not it. Right. It's like you missed your learning opportunity entirely, but now it's expected. That you have that skill, I guess to finish the analogy. Now they expect you to be able to read or something like that. You're like, I was just eating a snack. Yeah.
00:34:32
Speaker
it's It's a really hard line to balance, um because I remember when a friend slug who's on a different Discord server Not that anybody would know them or know which server. no People know who's like this. Anybody who knows like you'll appreciate the story. He was playing some type of puzzle game, and it's another one of those things where they don't tell you the rules. You have to infer the rules. OK. And some of the puzzles were fun because I'm like, oh, my God, I see a pattern here. Maybe we can use this. And it felt cool to be like, oh, I've connected the dots.
00:35:08
Speaker
But for other things where it seemed 100% arbitrary and you weren't able to figure out the the rule set or the pattern, you're just like, oh, I guess I'll come back to it. Right. But it could be very disheartening and make me just not want to. Yeah.
00:35:26
Speaker
Anyway, I did enjoy Talos 2. I Talos does a better job with that, would you agree? Than Talos 2 does, or than other games? Than other games, as far as like yeah teaching you.
00:35:41
Speaker
the yeah the pieces you would need to utilize. Well, it'll actually like explicitly tell you in some cases, hey, you don't have what you need here. Right. um Or through common common peace understanding. Right. So like by that, I mean, Talos has things like prisms and they have things like emitters and splitters and stuff like that. And wherever you find that it functions the same.
00:36:09
Speaker
Like, it's not like, oh, well, it's cloudy here. So now everything's it's bizarro world. And what you thought you knew is is lost. No. That accumulated knowledge that you've gained through all of these puzzles is still relevant. If you took a break in the middle of the game and you came back like a year later, you may struggle a little bit when you relearn how all this stuff works and interacts. But if you play through the game linearly or semi-linearly as you can go between puzzles, like You're going to have the information you need Yeah, and like other games do the same thing to a much simpler extent Like you might not call it a puzzle necessarily, but like ocarina of time um There would be points where you're like, oh, what's that stone statue? I keep seeing this stone statue and then eventually you find out you're like, oh if I have the a Mask of truth, I can like talk to the stone statues um And that's always true every statue you run across you can talk to you
00:37:07
Speaker
or like here's a here's a wooden target for the hook shot. And then eventually you start to like condition yourself and you're like, I can't reach it now. I keep seeing like all these wooden boxes and areas I can't reach or like wooden things on the walls. And then you get the hook shot and you get the first one and you're like, oh, gotcha. And they don't deprive you of that realization by just being like, by the way, we marked on your map all of the locations and where the hook shot can be used.
00:37:36
Speaker
But if you were being attentive, you understand now and it always works on wooden targets. So consistency is important. um Yeah, Talos is emblematic of being a good solution to that problem, I think. Yeah, it was also a little. This is the puzzle episode, so it is a little different as far as.
00:38:03
Speaker
how it works, because essentially it's giving you tools. They're like, hey, you need to get, it's what is it, a star or like a Tetris piece? They're like, hey, we're going to show you where this thing is. Go get it. Right. And there's obviously some barrier of entry, maybe like a a force field wall, which can be disabled by the projectors. You're like, okay, well, i I have one projector, but there's like multiple walls. And you start to look around for like, oh, are there more tools that I can access in this puzzle? Exactly. um Okay, I have all the tools I need for all the tools that I can possibly get.
00:38:43
Speaker
how do I leverage them? Because I know how each one works individually, and then it's using them in conjunction, and you might have to move things around to change the state of the puzzle to access it.
00:38:58
Speaker
And that's, that's brilliant. That's the thing that I appreciate. And then also is stumps me in Talos is part of the puzzle. Oftentimes is the identification of which tools you need to have unlocked at a given time. Cause sometimes it'll put you in a like sort of binary state where it's like.
00:39:15
Speaker
Okay, well you could choose to use this tool, but if you do, this other one's going to be locked off behind a force field. Or you could choose to use that tool, but if you do, then this one's going to be locked off beyond the force field. Or maybe you jump over a wall, or you move through ah a gate that you can't like take tools with you.
00:39:33
Speaker
um and that's That's good design because it adds a full layer of complexity where it's now not only do I need to understand all of the puzzle components, it's also which of these components are actually necessary for the completion of the puzzle and I'll work towards unlocking those.
00:39:53
Speaker
um which is a more complicated example than the hook shot, I would say, but well, yeah, for sure.
Puzzle Games: Enhancing Depth and Exploration
00:40:01
Speaker
But again, I think through if you work through a lot of those puzzles just backwards, like, oh, I need to get here.
00:40:09
Speaker
This, if I need to get here, it's blocked off by this. What do I use to get through this? Right. OK, well, for me to get through that, I need to do something else. And then you arrive at the initial thing. We're like, OK, here. And even if you don't get it the first time, you might get halfway where you, let's say, out of four laser walls, you open two. You're like, OK. And then you you muse about it, you think about it, and you try some other stuff. but It's all working within the rule set. You know, with the tools, you know, how they function. Right. Yeah. It doesn't feel cheap. Like it only feels cheap if the puzzle creator is operating on information that you don't have. And that's the reason I hate the witness. But, um, but yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm a big fan of games that can challenge you with like,
00:41:04
Speaker
without withholding information from you. That makes sense. Um, yeah. Where it wants you to figure it's giving you the tools to do so versus just figure this out blindly. Fuck your piece.
00:41:19
Speaker
Yeah. I'm still thinking about like, so for less complicated games, I'm still thinking about Zelda and something that they establish really early is lighting fires. Like it helps that in my opinion, link is canonically a pyromaniac. Um, but it's just like, Oh, you got deku sticks or deku sticks.
00:41:39
Speaker
depending on whether you watch my hero or not. And there's like all of these torches, and one of them's already lit. And so it becomes like a little basic pattern sort of detection thing. You're like, why are some of them lit, but other ones aren't? I mean, what if they all were? And then it works the first time, and you get the... Like the puzzle solved payoff, and the door unlocks, and you're like, I am going to light everything on fire for the rest of this game.
00:42:08
Speaker
And then eventually you get the fire arrows and you're like, end game. um And the design pattern would go on to Dark Souls 2, which it's funny. Yeah, they absolutely do. Just light fires all over the place. I don't know if it does anything in that game. I don't think it does.
00:42:28
Speaker
They're like, they're persistent, I believe. So if you light fires, they stay lit. um But other than literally lighting up the areas, I don't think there's a payoff. I also feel like I should know this because I'm the Dark Souls 2 person. i I don't think there is. um ah no I don't know. I do enjoy a little bit of pattern recognition.
00:42:51
Speaker
um
00:42:53
Speaker
But yeah, it can definitely be a lot at times. That's why, again, I love puzzles as optional things where like if you look, you're like, oh, this feels like a a puzzle area. What is the puzzle? And then you start piecing things together.
00:43:13
Speaker
um
00:43:16
Speaker
Yeah, like God of War had that for a number of things that you could unlock or find. And you didn't need to do any of them, but one was just like, hey, um throw axes and hit the the targets. h Get the targets.
00:43:37
Speaker
But yeah, you'd have to find three and maybe you did find all three eventually, but maybe you couldn't access them all from the same point or something else. um So yeah, it might be puzzle identification plus some experimentation a little bit. Right.
00:43:55
Speaker
And it feels good to, oh, I've identified this is a puzzle. I've identified what I need to solve it. And then I figured out how to solve it. And I've now been rewarded with some bonus crafting materials or a new weapon or whatever the fuck it is. Right. Because I think.
00:44:12
Speaker
One of the payoffs to solving puzzles and interacting with a world like this is it's helping you develop knowledge of like the world state. It's helping you get more immersed in what's going on. Even if you're just treating it as a game, I'm not saying it needs to be like from an RPG perspective, you're like I'm more in tune with link until I light things on fire.
00:44:31
Speaker
But it's no it's like the same from my experience with the game, lighting the torches leads to something good. um you know From my experience with the game, doing the side activity leads to something good, or paying attention to know when I need to do the side activity leads to something good. um And so that can lead to more like active gameplay.
00:44:53
Speaker
um I think that's, I think that's good. It helps get people more invested and it adds depth to your game. Yeah. You're not going to be looking at things just like the surface level of, Oh, this is a background. You're going to be looking for hidden meaning or something in everything. yeah Um,
00:45:17
Speaker
And I kind of like that because again, like it's it's really easy to be like, it's a game. Yeah. It's nothing to look at it of like, what are they hiding from me? Where is it? There's a lot of games that you can just play like you're playing ruin or and kill boss. Right. But sometimes there's stuff to do along the way that adds some depth to it.
00:45:39
Speaker
um ah um How do you feel about invisible walls in this case? Because that is something that you can technically add to a game to like hide some stuff behind. Like ah illusory walls or walls you have to interact with and stuff like that. Yeah.
00:45:55
Speaker
um I don't like them and I've kind of never liked them and Great youtuber love the content but illusory walls are pretty much the epitome of poor game design for me with some exceptions if there's a hint of be it visual or auditory, that something is going on here, and then you can use that to identify it like this wall is illusory, then great. But the issue is if you do that, you can't you cannot then have walls that are actually solid, but they look like illusory walls, and Dark Souls is full of these. like There are some walls in Dark Souls where you're like, it kind of looks like the path would go straight through here. And then you hit it with your sword and you're like, oh my gosh, it's an illusion.
00:46:46
Speaker
And then you're like, he kind of looks like the path would go straight through here. And there's a message and it's like illusory wall ahead. And it has 5 million upvotes or whatever. yeah And you hit it with a sword and absolutely nothing happens. And you're like, I hate everything. Yeah. I don't think anything should ever be designed as, well, they'll eventually find it if they hit everything.
00:47:11
Speaker
who Which I want to go back to remnant two and dunk on this again. Yeah. um There was specifically a subclass. Where were they called again? Classes. Yeah, I can't remember exactly. um I've purged most of that from my head and to make room for war. Clement. There was a there was a class that you had to be in the futuristic dusk space area. Yeah. And in a specific part of the map,
00:47:40
Speaker
you had to look for a certain pattern in the skybox, man. And then you had to explore into the, hey, don't go beyond here. This is where like the edge of the level is. This is the kill zone. You'll start to die. You have to push through that, that thing that's actively just waiting you not to go this way to in this one specific location,
00:48:04
Speaker
to find that class and that's the only way to get it.
Secrets and Community in Gaming
00:48:07
Speaker
And I don't know how the fuck anybody found it without, you know, just banging their head active against the wall or using a bot to script out having that bot bang their head against every fucking wall. um Because that's that's insanity. Yeah. Why would you expect any player to ever just hug around the edge? Oh, when I go here, I die. Well, what if I tried this at every single possible location? Uh huh.
00:48:34
Speaker
Like I have to assume, the only way that this is justifiable is if there's something in the game that points you in that direction. Yes. And I have to assume something like that exists, but I don't know. And it could, it maybe it doesn't, right? Like maybe they don't even deserve that credit.
00:48:51
Speaker
um I think if you were maybe like standing around a certain spot and then you look at some structure and it kind of looks like an arrow pointing in your direction, you know what? Fair. If that is, if that arrow is visible from a multiple spots. Yeah. But if you're doing it from, Hey, you have to be at this exact place in this exact condition. No, because what are the odds somebody's going to find it?
00:49:18
Speaker
Yeah, I want to go back to the Dark Souls example because I do think there's a little bit more depth to discuss there. Like I think part of it is because of the messages in the game. Like if you didn't have messages, illusory walls would only exclusively be bad. But because there are messages,
00:49:39
Speaker
you're getting value to the shareholders because people have purchased Xbox Live in order to see the messages on the ground or whatever. So that makes a way of it, no. But like it can sort of build to that sense of community where you're like, oh, I would have missed that. But someone called it out with a message, so now now I see it. It just also introduces that sub-community of people who are literally just ah try jumping ahead, right, near a ledge or something like that.
00:50:07
Speaker
oh I mean, I like the community aspect of it, but. Yeah, I agree. Like the illusory wall rules or pattern in Dark Souls is feels very random at the bottom of Blighttown. There is a tree and I don't know how the fuck you would ever. I don't know how people found that.
00:50:31
Speaker
Are you talking about Ash Lake? Ash Lake, yeah. Because you find the tree, you find a path, you can go up to, you find a chest. Cool. Behind that chest, if you were for some reason attacked behind the chest, which I don't think there's a reason for you to do, there is an illusory wall. You're like, oh, that's cool. And I think there's a second chest behind it.
00:50:52
Speaker
I remember, so it was either here. I think you're right. I think it's actually literally two illusory walls. I know that it exists in Dark Souls 2 where it's just like, oh, you did it. You found the illusory of wall. Here's a chest. And then you open it and you're like, this isn't that good. Like the loot's not that good or whatever. And you could just hit, continue to hit an illusory wall behind that one to get the actual loot, which is very funny. But I think you're right. That does exist in Dark Souls 1. Yeah. And it's just.
00:51:21
Speaker
I don't know how anybody would ever do that without infinite trial and error. Yeah. I think part of it is kind of like the messages and the mystique and what they were kind of going for. Like it almost in Dark Souls case.
00:51:36
Speaker
I don't want to like continue to give them a pass, but Ash Lake is also kind of a it is definitely a hidden area. And the um the Covenant of Dragons or whatever they're called is a hidden covenant. um And they didn't intend for all players to find this. that It was much more intended to be like, hey, yeah, you beat Dark Souls. Did you see Ash Lake, you know, with the giant freaking hydrants? Wasn't that awesome? And you're like, what are you talking about? um Kind of like give people that experience, but
00:52:07
Speaker
I don't know. It's, it's a risk, right? It's not players don't have to experience everything in your game and it's okay to hide some stuff, but there should also be some stuff to point them in that direction. And even in Dark Souls, I really don't know if there's anything to point you to Ash Lake. I think that's basically assuming communication around the game was going to do it.
00:52:30
Speaker
Yeah, I do like having some of that aspect of oh, hey, you're playing through this. Did you find the one thing? ahha Because it is cool to feel like what? No. And then you can share something with them that maybe they didn't find you're like a secret boss they did not encounter because it reinvigorates you to go back and explore. a big Well, if I missed this, what else did I miss? Maybe I need to explore more.
00:52:55
Speaker
um That kind of stayed true with dragons. I think in three there's the dragon meditation statue that like, if you meditate next to it, it takes you to a completely different area. And it's, I mean, I like stuff like that. It's, it doesn't have to be straightforward. Um, but some of that plays back into what we were saying, which is the intuition, right? The feeling there's more going on here, or I should try this.
00:53:22
Speaker
Um, but there should be some type of indicator, right? Like in Elden Ring for, uh, plasticity sacks. Like if you look, you can actually grant, you have to be around a certain area, but if you look down and you're like, this is close enough where I won't die from falling and you can repeat that across several rock jumps. You're like, this is going down somewhere. Uh-huh. Yeah.
00:53:51
Speaker
Now, it's cool. and Part of that is those are also exploration games, right? That's right. They expect you to be. You're not just there to kill boss, right? There's going to be a lot of other stuff going on. You definitely want to find what is obviously shown in front of you and then what is around the corners that is being kept secret. Right. Check your corners. Literally always.
00:54:18
Speaker
um Trying to think of other aspects of puzzles in games, or if we better basically cover it, if that's just the encyclopedic coverage of everything that's existed. That might be it. That might be all of the puzzles that have ever existed in a video game.
00:54:42
Speaker
Crazy. I mean, I'm looking at recently played like vampire survivors. I know has secrets. Yes. But some of the secrets can be labeled as like, hey, this thing. Yeah. You can use that as a clue. Yeah. Yeah. And it's nice to take some vague thing and like, oh, I need to go explore by the the blue rock. OK. And then something to work towards and find.
00:55:10
Speaker
but it's giving you some parameter or some hint in that direction. I thought of the game I have to cover for this. What's that? Which is Outer Wilds. You can take five, Dave. it's it's Actually, take 10. No, I'm not going to spoil anything for Outer Wilds. would never I would never.
00:55:31
Speaker
um But what you just said, is like basically perfected within that game which is there are a bunch of different planets you can explore them they're not that big because everything's like small in this game but um if there is something at that planet that you discover it gets added to your galaxy map compendium And literally, like at any point, you can just open the menu, like look at a planet, and it'll have brief pieces of information that your character found out while they were there. Like, oh, you read a journal entry, and it had this information. Or you interacted with a statue, and it did this or something like that. And the game doesn't have that many macro interactions.
00:56:22
Speaker
in order for like a lot of these things to like muck up your journal. um But most importantly, what it will say is there is more to discover here if the planet does if you haven't figured out everything about the planet yet um that you can currently like figure out. And that there is more to discover here is just like an absolute challenge in an exploration game, because you're like,
00:56:48
Speaker
what am I missing? And it's perfectly valid to go off and explore somewhere else because oftentimes the piece of information can be like a two-way link. It's something that relates to what happened on another planet. So if you find out what happened on the other planet, you can use that information to figure out what happened over here.
00:57:06
Speaker
But the game explicitly tells you it's like the one place where they'll just explicitly break the fourth wall. Because keeping track of information in a journal, that makes sense. Lots of games do that. What they usually don't do is keep track of what you don't know in a journal, right? Because that's literally cheating if you think about it.
00:57:25
Speaker
um ah But it helps. I'm going to say not entirely. OK. If we look back at some older games, it'd be like, hey, how many secrets did you find? Oh, zero or three? You're like, oh there were secrets here? No, you didn't match interact on every door, every wall. Having something like that is just like a nice thing to go back to. Because like in modern day, I think for Armored Core 6, I was literally just going off of Steam achievements.
00:57:58
Speaker
it like There are some that they will keep secret until you actually do it. yeah um I was like, oh there's this many. Let me go back and keep playing and exploring stuff until I've figured out what it is. So you could use the fact that you got an achievement that's later in the achievement list to know that you missed something previously.
00:58:19
Speaker
Either something like that or just to know that there are certain locked achievements that it hasn't told me about yet. right But it's not the most direct way, obviously. Yeah. and It's worth noting for Outer Wilds, it's also not the most direct thing. It's literally telling you somewhere on this planet there was information you didn't figure out.
00:58:42
Speaker
but Yeah, that's still a hint in and of itself, because it's like, hey, you're missing something here. OK, exactly. Yeah, the secrets counter is a really good example or ah or a rebuttal that it's um super novel.
00:58:59
Speaker
um Yeah. Great game, though. Can't talk about a great game. um
00:59:10
Speaker
There's a lot of stuff that fire does in Dark Souls two, but it's not consistent. And a lot of it was added in scholar of the person. So, uh, Dark Souls two, not consistent. What? who who Whoa. That's so crazy. In the series for build diversity and leveling adaptation.
00:59:37
Speaker
You can't level adaptation in the other other entries, Dave, for some reason. For some reason. they are that's That's so crazy, it didn't come back into the Elden Ring sphere. Do you want a stat that just improves your iframes? It's kind of important. I have infinite... I mean, you can't you could pump it up pretty high in Dark Souls, but obviously there's... there's drama It's so bad. Adaptation is so bad. It was such a bad idea. It was a bad idea then. It's still a bad idea.
01:00:11
Speaker
um Yeah. But I mean, to be fair, so was the poison resist and Dark Souls one. So noob traps. Yeah. they They figured it out eventually and now stats actually do things. So that's nice.
01:00:35
Speaker
Yeah. I think I'm puzzled out. I think really the only thing I'll have to figure out is how can we end this episode? That's a good question.