Thoughts on Puzzles

Last week in class, one of our discussion topics was genre marketing.  We had a great time going around talking about how we are marketed to and the different strategies for each genre.  These conversations led to my last blog topic of game hooks and has also spurred my writing below.  Through our converstations regarding marketing, it lead us to the puzzle genre.  As we began to dig deeper into this genre, you find that this is one that is linked into almost every genre out there.  Every game seems to have a puzzle element in it.

We began to discuss how each of us would define a puzzle and how they are used in games today.  Typically I would view a puzzle as something where a combination of thought, trial and error and clues are used to solve a situation.  The situation could be forming a square from oddly shaped items, or it could be getting object X from point A to point B.  It could also be forming words from letters or numbers into words.  A puzzle could also be a situation like mahjong where you are matching like tiles in order to remove them from the board.

Puzzles are varied in there form and difficulty level.  The descriptions above are just basic puzzle forms.  From here a game designer adds in obstacles, timeframes, external situations and so on, in order to increase the difficulty and make gameplay more exciting.  Puzzles can be used to pass the time, exercise the mind, or even as levels within other game types. 

The great thing about puzzle games is that they do span many age groups and generations and are used for varying reasons.  This does however, pose a problem in marketing where they will have to market to a situation rather than a specific type of person.  Other genres are simply elaborate puzzles with many elements but the fundamental object is trying to solve the situation.  If you think about it, puzzles are everywhere and in almost every situation.  Mario is a perfect example of how a puzzle is leveraged in other game genres.