In a genre where spoilers are devastating, how do we talk about puzzle games?

Like many, I stopped playing my first time over a frustration with the jet pack and ship movement controls.

I returned later, this time determined to master the movement controls only to find that after mastering them you eventually abandon perfect movement for efficiency anyways and perfect gameplay looks a lot like the initial flailings.

Anytime you get 'stuck' in the game the answer is always, "what have you tried, what can you try instead?" Illuminating the tendency to presuppose an answer, and grow frustrated when it fails repeatedly.

It's certainly a "just play it without looking up anything about it" game. I went in without being spoiled by the "first surprise" that is referenced in this article and was stunned when I figured it out.

Swapping FPS violence for scientific and archaeological discovery, and a wholesome story centered on the social bonds of music make for a truly wonderful gaming experience.

I highly recommend the game to anyone.

I’m not going to sue the author, obviously; but it sounds as though he enjoys puzzle games in a different way and for a different reason from me, and I find it hard to relate to his feelings about them.

If your plan is to cheat as soon as you get stuck, I can’t imagine why you would choose to play a puzzle game at all. For me, what I enjoy about puzzle games is precisely the immense satisfaction that comes from conquering a well-designed puzzle after a struggle.

Perhaps one difference between the author and me is that I usually have closed-ended questions rather than open-ended questions like “give me a minimal clue that’s helpful but not obvious”, for which I’d trust ChatGPT far less.

https://www.reddit.com/r/outerwilds/wiki/index/gamerecs

I can vouch for Outer Wilds and Tunic being masterpieces, with Blue Prince getting a B+ from me.

Wish someone would wipe my memories of that game so I can play it again.

Mario Maker 2 has a "Check Point" system where the software remembers whether Mario has reached one of two "Check Points" in the course and if so resets Mario to that point if/when he dies. You can only have zero, one or two such "Check Points". This leads to two important phenomena

1. Antis. A Soft Lock is a situation where Mario can't win, but also can't die, this is extremely frustrating because the player must start over, losing any progress. A good course designer ensures this never happens. But a twisted course designer does so by making it possible yet extremely difficult to die in this situation, thus the art of the "Anti-Soft-Lock" or just "Anti". The player is tricked into entering a situation in which they must complete some very difficult tasks, not to win but just to die and keep playing from a check point they've reached.

2. Knowledge Check Points. With only two CPs, a really elaborate course must either stretch considerably between the CPs, meaning players who die between CPs must re-do a lot of work and that's annoying OR invent a way to re-use them. There are tricks to re-use exactly two CPs plus the "Red Coins" from Mario which are kept when Mario dies, but a cleverer trick is to just have the player learn something which changes how they will behave.

My favourite KCP is an MM2 level where the player can't win... until they realise there's a way to obtain an important power up right at the start of the course, which then changes how they tackle everything else and opens up a route to success. The dead end you'd reach if you don't know about this, reveals that hidden power up.

Steam guides for Blue Prince are fantastic about this, and were extremely welcome to me once the RNG nature of the game stopped being exciting and started being a tedious obstacle. There's nothing quite like needing to spend several real world hours to try a puzzle solution that may be a complete waste of time, simply because the game doesn't really like to spawn the needed rooms (in an acceptable configuration) very often.

So it's still very fun to replay it with a randomizer for example.

I'm not someone who uses LLMs heavily, but I've found this kind of usecase suited my needs very nicely.

A game where seeing a single screenshot ruins the experience wasn't very substantial to begin with.

> Because information equals progress in this genre, there’s typically no way to brute force the path forward whenever you find yourself truly stuck.

Except that is almost always possible - games by their very nature are usually very restricted in what you can do which makes exploration of all possible options possible. But usually better would be trying to reason about the problem. Looking up outside help is and has always been equivalent to giving up - which is fine if you don't want to solve the puzzle but definitely not needed to progress if you are patient.