So, I'm developing a small puzzle for a game I'm making, and wanted to see how difficult it would be to solve. The clues are: aunx yr b xdey bthn ne k rlli kfar c op ienc pakz From these clues, you should form a phrase. I didn't design it to be difficult, so I'm curious how long it will take to solve. Enjoy. Also: Each line is a clue that the player could get one at a time. There are 10 clues total. The solution of this puzzle is one phrase in English. [Edited by - Cygnus_X on March 31, 2009 5:56:22 PM]

I think the problem with this puzzle is it is unclear where to start. For most games, puzzles need to be really quite easy. I don't mean this in the way, games should lie down to make people feel good about themselves, but if a person has no idea what they are supposed to be doing (as I do with this one :P) then they will either guess, making the success not at all rewarding, or quit.

I am sure that, given a few hours, I might be able to solve it. However, from a game designers perspective, you need to either give a simpler example or be more clear with what you are supposed to be working out.

Re:

I solved it in one hour but your clue was not correct, and that is
definitely why it took longer than it should. I woudln't say that
each line has its own clue, because to solve the puzzle, the player
must look at the entire set to discover the clue.


I think your puzzle difficulty is appropriate and fun, not tedious
if you see it. (That is, if you didn't give a wrong clue.)

[ Edit: Re: drakostar ]
It does not require context to solve the puzzle. I think all you need
to know is that the phrase itself is in English.

I don't know how to describe the clue in another way that doesn't
give out the solution.


This is what I would mean if I were to say that each line is its own clue:

qvwzh
myhva
bkd
veyr
pebp
ordyd

Each line is one word, you do not need to look at the rest of the phrase
to solve each word. This is not the same phrase as the one you gave so
that you could try it.

[Edited by - Wai on March 28, 2009 7:30:51 PM]

Quote:

Original post by thk123 but if a person has no idea what they are supposed to be doing (as I do with this one :P) then they will either guess, making the success not at all rewarding, or quit.

This is the difficulty I have with many adventure games: the rules of the world aren't clear. If I have no idea what the game expects from me or will allow me to do, I can be frustrated by supposedly easy puzzles.

It's all about context. But I have to say, if this is just a straight substitution...meh. It's "easy", just tedious. I can find such puzzles in a book, or even the newspaper. In a game, I expect all sorts of interesting context which would point me in the direction of the answer. Or at least the question.

Re:

I still don't know what you mean by the following.

Quote:

Edited: To make it 'easier', for ra.

I frequent the online gamedev chat room alot. A guy with the alias ra said it was too hard. So I modified the arrangement to make it easier.

Also, I haven't seen anyone post the correct answer.

You mean you don't mind if someone posts the answer?
It is not next to grandma's apple tree for sure.

Every puzzle game bring you into stages. There are certain rules you have to follow or imply through easier puzzles, and then the harder puzzles become easier.

Similar to learning how to write. Before you learn the sentences, you will have to learn the words, the eight parts of speech that words belong to, the syntax (order of the parts of speech), and the punctuation, but unknown to most of you, you do not need to learn the alphabet in order to learn how to write. A good analogy is in programming. Most people begin learning high level language, and in my analogy, high level languages are words. Some of these people do not appreciate low level languages, and in my analogy, low level languages are letters of the alphabet. You do not need the lower level language to learn programming, so similarly, you do not need to learn the alphabet to write sentences, you only need to learn how to write the words in whole. Of course, most people would say that learning to write by learning to write whole words is harder than to learn the alphabet first, but then, the same situation arises in learning how to write programming. There are still people who do not learn low level languages in addition to high level languages, so they are the ones who say that low level languages are hard!

Now apply to your puzzle. You have to teach a technique that is neccessary for people to solve a puzzle. Throwing a puzzle at someone is like telling them to learn how to write sentences before they learn to write words.

I would agree with you, but Wai obviously figured it out. The puzzle may seem hard, but I promise you, it is not.

Also, context for my particular game will be something like this:

You walk into the merchant's store to buy items, etc like you always do, and instead of the merchant giving you crap about how you suck as a hero, one day, he says this:

There is a rumor that still circulates in this town. An old man who worked at the nearby cemetery one day discovered an item of considerable value. With no children to pass his fortune to, he buried it, leaving clues to its whereabouts on the cemetery tombstones. If you're interested in researching this, a good place would be the graveyard. I will mark it on your map.


From there, you look through the graveyard, fight monsters, and discover each 'clue' randomly. You can then tell the merchant the answer (by typing the answer in), and off you go to part 2 of the story line.

Nothing overly complicated, just a little hill to climb to get an item of some value.

[Edited by - Cygnus_X on March 30, 2009 9:31:52 PM]

If your puzzle doesn't give any hint as to what your suppose to do its not necessarily hard but its not "solving", its just random guessing. Its no different than all the graphical adventure games where to open the door you need to combine the monkey with the ipod and use it on the desk lamp.