On Games and Puzzles

…not exactly about the key philosophical points brought up in the game about humanity, that’s a little too deep for this newsletter. Instead, it really got me thinking about what makes a game a game, what makes a puzzle a puzzle, and whether there was a binary choice here or a true spectrum that blends between the two. It helps that I’d also been talking recently about the brilliant Blue Prince, an utter masterpiece by Tonda Ros.

This was my key thought when playing a crafted puzzle. Whether it’s a series of puzzles from a video game, a well made traditional puzzle like you might find in a puzzle hunt like the MIT mystery hunt, or a well crafted question from a teacher intended to lead you to think about a certain topic in a certain way, I love the feeling I get going through these steps:

Those last two steps are critical. First of all, I get a huge dopamine rush from that final transition from “WTF” to “Solved!”¹ Brilliant puzzles have been known to give me goosebumps, and I think they’re proportional to the amount of work I had to do to reach the solution.

But for an especially good puzzle, my final thoughts are not usually about how clever I am to have found the solution, but for how clever the puzzle designer must have been to both find this puzzle, display it in a way that entices me to solve it, and has just enough breadcrumbs to get me through the solution before I get bored and give up, but without feeling like the solution was given to me on a plate.

I subscribe to a substack called Artisanal Sudoku, and I recently solved a puzzle that the author gave a difficulty rating of 10/10 to, called Forty Four. It investigates the way 8-cell ‘cages’ work in the geometry of a sudoku, and uses a ‘Fog-of-war’ format where new clues are revealed to you as you earn them. It’s puzzle #3 of volume 232, and if you are so inclined you can try your hand at it here.

I think the puzzle is absolutely brilliant, and I happily told the author so. But again, as happy as I was to solve the puzzle, what I actually was floored by was the ingenuity of the setter himself, James Sinclair.

After all, how could I possibly outsmart the puzzle author? There isn’t a level I can reach that ranks me above him². He set a puzzle to test my intelligence, and either I can fail to solve it, which makes me fail as a player and the setter fail as a setter, or I can solve the puzzle meaning we both succeeded in our tasks. That’s when I realised that good puzzle setting and solving is a co-operative experience - Just like me giving a great clue in Codenames and you getting all the words I was going for.

It is sometimes possible to super-solve a puzzle. Perhaps in the Talos Principle there’s actually one more tool in the puzzle than you strictly needed to solve it, and so solving the puzzle without using the extra tool can elevate you above the puzzle setter in some way - you did it better than they thought you would. Only what’s that? Achievement unlocked? Damn! I didn’t do anything novel after all - you already figured out there was a more efficient way to solve the puzzle, and you awarding me an achievement for it is really just your way of saying yes, I did know that was possible. Well done for finding it.

Before I leave this puzzle-solving section, 2 brief asides, one on speed⁴ and one on questions⁵.

I think there’s a distinction here between puzzles and solo games too. I think it’s replayability and randomness. A good puzzle you can only really play once. Once it’s solved it’s solved, and even coming back to a good puzzle after some time isn’t likely to feel like a fresh experience, because you’ll remember the key steps, not figure something out from fresh again.

Solo games on the other hand are supposed to be replayed over and over. For Northwood! (a solo trick-taking game) by Wil Su is an article I wrote about a solo game I really enjoy. Aside from the campaign mode, the regular game does not feel like it’s me playing against the creator of the game, Wil Su. It feels like it’s me, with the assortment of tools that I have this time, against the shuffle I’m dealt this time.

The “Puzzle” of For Northwood is in learning how to maximise your winning chances by using the tools you have. What I love is finding a card that has a special ability that feels like it should be used in one particularly obvious way, and finding that actually there are other ways to use the card that in certain scenarios (perhaps in combination with other cards) actually lead to higher odds of success.

When I win a particular hand of For Northwood, I don’t immediately think I’ve learned everything that Wil Su set out to teach me. I feel like I’ve been given the tools to win, and not only do I have to learn how to use them on my own, but only I get to really say whether I’ve learned all there is to learn about success in the game - and I might learn to use them better than the designer did.

So, how is a game like a puzzle, and how is it not like a puzzle? I love the part of the game where I go from “What even is this game” to understanding the mechanics on a functional level, to understanding how the pieces fit together strategically. The puzzle is in those individual questions. Why is this card here? Do I want it?

I like seeing cards which have an ability that’s easy to understand the mechanics of, but harder to understand the purpose, or power level of. This card lets me turn two gooseberries into a slushie, but this one assembles an extra contraption any time I assemble a contraption. Is 2 gooseberries for a slushie a good exchange rate? Do I need a slushie? Does my opponent need a slushie? Will I ever assemble a contraption? How useful is assembling another one?

I like seeing expensive cards in a resource-management game, and thinking - How is it even possible to afford that? Is it worth the investment of time and materials to make it? These steps feel like a puzzle. Where it transcends into game territory is the next question - having determined I can and should make it, how do I make it before anyone else? What’s my backup plan if someone does something to stop me?

And how the other people feature in your game is the job of the designer. There are certainly games that you can play where it almost doesn’t matter that there are other people at the table. I’ve heard the term Multiplayer Solitaire used, usually as a negative, to describe these kinds of games, where player interaction is low enough that you actually feel like everyone at the table is playing their own solo game, and we’ll just compare scores at the end. The other people at the table serve as either a source of randomness, or a final score to compare to (after all, “Did you score more than your friend?” is a more compelling question than “Did you break 100 points?”)

I am not saying that Multiplayer Solitaire is a bad thing. I have enjoyed building LEGO sets at the table with other people, using the LEGO as a thing to keep me mentally engaged and in the room instead of say on my phone, whilst we catch up on what’s happened since we last met, the clicking of the building bricks allowing concentrated silences to occur without becoming socially awkward. Is LEGO a competitive game? Absolutely not - and I see no reason why such games shouldn’t be socially enjoyed the same way.

On the other end of the interactivity spectrum though is a game like Arcs, where no points can actually be scored unless a player actively does something to enable it, thus setting the terms of what to fight over. The game, relying as it does on the players to decide what is important and how to fight over the limited points available each round, literally cannot be played solo³. Clever play in that game is absolutely about playing the people at the table, as everything you do affects a shared game space that quite possibly affects everyone at the table, in ways you might not understand or even see.

Which Witch? - our first game (did I mention it’s coming soon to a Kickstarter campaign? One that you should totally follow.) is absolutely not a solo game, it’s right there on the far end of the interactivity. There are tools for you to discover how best to use, in the name of the witches you call upon and the familiars that you bond, but the meat of the game is in the other people playing with you. There is no unstoppable strategy because people are unpredictable and simultaneous selection can always find a way to jam a spanner in the works!

Nat has done an incredible job here of designing a game of 100% uptime and involvement, where the tools exist on the table to thwart the plan that your opponents are making, if only you can work out what those plans are, and who is making them! The puzzle is there to work out how to best use the witches you have available, but the game is in reading the table and knowing your opponents, and what they will do next.

We will have a deeper dive into some of the mechanics in Which Witch? for you to look forward to in next week’s Newsletter.

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