设计解谜游戏的30堂课笔记（I）
本文是Elyot Grant - 30 Puzzle Design Lessons, Extended Director’s Cut 的笔记，其授权中译可以在这里找到。
Introduction
traditional puzzle designers and vedio game designers.
- Puzzle design has a rich history
- Puzzle design knowledge is siloed
- Many sub-areas with their own
- vocabulary
- construction techniques
- best practices
- aesthetic inclinations
- Many sub-areas with their own
Game designers:
- designing rulesets
- iterating via play-testing
- creating interesting sequences
- adjusting difficulty
- fun through flow and challendge
Puzzle designers:
- Identifying powerful Eureka Moments
- Crafting maximally impactful setups for them
Eureka Moment
An Eureka moment1 is a sudden, pleasureful, fluent, confident feeling of understanding.
Puzzle
A puzzle2 is anything that conseals a Eureka Moment.
Eureka Moments are the atoms of puzzles
Puzzles are isomorphic to humor
Phychology of eureka moments:
- Positive affect
- Highly dopaminergic
- Up-regulate memory formation
- Buffer norepinephrine
- Reduce stress
- Increase persistence
Maximize the amount of sparkle
Sparkle
sparkle is the apmlitude of Eurika
Crosswords
- lively answers
- clever clues3
Avoid Chaff
Chaff
- The boring part of puzzles
- No sparkle
- Eg: crosswordese
- Bad clues
- Green Paint (meaningless word combination)
- rewaters (strained entries)
- natric (cross of 2 unguessavle names)
- ALDI(regional words)
Surprise is a key source of sparkle
Sam Loyd
Interesting truths are the root of surprise
Smothered mates are possible
Convey this truth to the solver.
Why this example4?
- Victory in tough positions
- Enemy 1 move from winning
- Queen Sacrifice
- King’s protection is its downfall
- Lone knight delevering mate
Unexpected
More Unexpected = more dopaminerginc5
Dopamine
- Reward
- Memory formation
- Seek more of the same
The human brain evolved to:
- find novel and unexpected things interesing
- remember them strongly
- seek more upon discovering them
Eureka is not fiero
Fiero: the emotion of overcoming a tough challendge
Fiero6 approach to puzzle design
- Create puzzle
- Make it challendgeing
- The player will feel smart
The Fiero approach is not bad per se.
But any challendge can confer Fiero.
Only puzzles confer Eureka.
Underwhelming reasons for including puzzles
- Increasing playtime
- Controlling pacing
- To insert an obstacle
- Pelief when it’s over
“It’s not a good idea to just be trying to make the player feel smart. You want to communicate to them an actual substance of something.” - Jonathan Blow
Different solvers seek different solving experiences
- Low dose vs hign dose
- Low difficulty vs high difficulty
- Novelty vs repetition
- Flow vs rollercoaster
Eureka is shareable
Eureka can be fuuly experienced by an audience.Eureka is not spoilable.
Create many eureka moments
Create many eureka moments7.
Escape rooms
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传说阿基米德为国王鉴定王冠，发现阿基米德浮力定律的那一天，他正泡在浴盆里面。看到溢出的水，阿基米德脑子里面想到了计算浮力的办法，高声喊出“Eureka”。在《文明6》中，也有“尤里卡时刻”的说法，游戏“尤里卡时刻”里的含义是，文明在一些先验的实践中，发现了后续科技的一些关键突破点，降低了科技研究所需时间的过程。 ↩︎
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西方流行的puzzle形式包括但不限于：国际象棋残局、填字游戏以及数独等。电子游戏出现后，puzzle的形式大幅扩展，一个典型的例子是《塞尔达传说》里的“呀哈哈”。呀哈哈的谜题通常需要玩家基于林克的能力，以及一些物理知识的理解进行操作。中国传统的puzzle有九连环、谜语等。 ↩︎
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这样的标准可以迁移到中国传统的文义谜上。谜语双关的特性是文义类puzzle的典型代表。 ↩︎
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中象残局具有类似的特点 ↩︎
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举了小鼠的例子，惊喜越多，多巴胺水平越高。多巴胺奖励是人类的本能。 ↩︎
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作者认为，Fiero和Eureka像两个完全不同的维度，带给玩家的感受是不一样的 ↩︎
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关于这一点，还是举《塞尔达传说》为例。呀哈哈从发现的那一刻就是一个Eureka时刻: “原来这里藏着一个‘呀哈哈谜题’”是玩家和制作组心照不宣的默契。玩家想到解决呀哈哈的关键思路之后，又收获一个Eureka时刻。两个时刻构成一个递进。 ↩︎