Posted March 30, 2023 by sun2
I'm finding puzzle design to be an art in and of itself - maybe not an art that I'm particularly well versed at quiet yet. The puzzles in this project have quite abstract solutions, and I think there are some guidelines or limits I need to set on the player in order to make it more straight forward.
The general gameplay loop involves guiding the void people back to their homes, which involves them communicating to you via whatever means necessary to tell you where they come from. The paths to their homes are the most difficult part of this, because I want to make a relatively interesting world to traverse around without making very clear paths. The more interesting the world, the more complex the pathing seems to be and more annoying it may be for players to solve puzzles - especially in such a short game with a bit of a strange concept.
To solve this I've tried to split up the world into sections, inspired by how The Witness liked to split up their world into sections a bit. I am typically pointing the player to that area, and having them solve the puzzle mostly relative to that area only, such as this garden area that looks a bit different than the rest of the world by having different trees, surrounding border, path, etc: