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#Post#: 96--------------------------------------------------
13 Rules for Escape Room Puzzle Design
DIR By: Pam
Date: June 8, 2021, 9:09 am
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Errol, 2018
The Codex
HTML https://thecodex.ca/13-rules-for-escape-room-puzzle-design/
Sometimes people ask me for my thoughts on their escape room
puzzles. Most times I give my thoughts uninvited. Regardless, I
have written pages of my design thoughts over and over again as
I pick apart puzzles. Why not have it all in one place?
The following rules only cover how to design puzzles. I am not
covering how to integrate a puzzle smoothly into a game, nor how
to structure game and player flow, nor how to maximize an
optimal experience for a team. (Funny thing, usually I do all of
that first before I even get to creating the individual
puzzles.)
The reason I follow these rules is because I desire to create
elegant, satisfying, and fair puzzles. This isn’t to say it’s
easy. Gosh no. This is super hard to do and I don’t always
succeed.
The overall goal, however, is to create an awesome experience
for the players. If a puzzle breaks the rules but fits
beautifully and people rave about it, then I am all for it. And
that relates to the very first rule…
Table of Contents
Rule 1: Puzzles Should Be Fair – You are on the Player’s
Side
Rule 2: Clue Everything and Remove Ambiguities – Don’t Make
Players Guess
Rule 3: A Puzzle Should Have One Answer
Rule 4: A Puzzle Should Have a Self Validating Answer
Rule 5: Clues and Puzzles Should Be Clearly Linked
Rule 6: Aha! Correlations Should Make Sense
Rule 7: A Puzzle Should Not Take More than 5 minutes to
Complete
Rule 8: Tedious Work Should Not be Ambiguous on Instruction
Rule 9: Puzzles Should Have No Destroyable States
Rule 10: Puzzles Should Have Feedback
Rule 11: Your Puzzles Should Be Consistent – Follow Patterns
You Set
Rule 12: Your Puzzles will be too hard – Beta Test and
Iterate
Rule 13: Basic Rules
Conclusion
#Post#: 97--------------------------------------------------
Re: 13 Rules for Escape Room Puzzle Design
DIR By: Pam
Date: June 8, 2021, 12:03 pm
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Rule 1: Puzzles Should Be Fair – You are on the Player’s Side
[right] “I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted
you to deceive yourself.”
– Hercule Poirot[/right]
As a designer, I want people to solve my puzzles. I take no
delight in people’s failure. It’s strange to see escape room
designers take pride in the fact no one has solved their rooms.
If I see players as adversaries who shall never gain access to
the secrets I’ve hidden, then I should have gone into
encryption. Rather, I cheer players on when I watch them solve
my puzzles. When I design my puzzles, I am on the player’s side.
And thus, puzzles should be fair. I am not there to trick
people. I am not there to mislead them. I do not put in
roadblocks to ensure a humbling defeat.
This does not mean I’m stuck with creating simple and easy
puzzles. Puzzles can still be complex and difficult. Not only do
players enjoy challenge, they’ll “embrace [it] and don’t mind
failing as long as the failure seems fair.”
What does “fair” mean? Fair means a random element won’t punish
them with a loss. Fair means the players have all the available
resources and it is up to their intellect and skill to win. Fair
means a player can avoid bad experiences.
Fair means the player is in control of their win state.
This rule comes first because in many ways the upcoming rules
are just subsets of this one.
Your puzzles are meant to be solved. Your puzzles are for your
players. Although the following advice speaks within the video
game industry, Bruce Shelley’s sentiment applies here: “the
player should have the fun, not the designer, programmer, or
computer.”
#Post#: 98--------------------------------------------------
Re: 13 Rules for Escape Room Puzzle Design
DIR By: Pam
Date: June 8, 2021, 12:22 pm
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Rule 2: Clue Everything and Remove Ambiguities – Don’t Make
Players Guess
[right] “One does not like to make definite assertions unless
one has a little more definite knowledge.”
– Miss Marple[/right]
Again, this is another one of those maxims all other rules fall
under.
Clue everything.
Sometimes information is left out because the designer thinks
it’s obvious, or they want to make it more difficult, or they
just overlook it.
Don’t. Eradicate any unknown in your puzzle by giving proper
clues.
You may be thinking, “But that’s the whole point of a puzzle!
They need to deduce the missing information!” However, Sherlock
Holmes solves mysteries from the clues left behind. He doesn’t
make assumptions when the evidence doesn’t support it.
When you leave information out of your puzzle, it creates
ambiguities.
A common lament I hear is, “How was I supposed to know that?” Or
perhaps you’ve heard an enthusiast say “This needs to be better
clued.”
Let’s give an example: the oft-used numerical date format.
I’ve been in an escape room where we had to plug a date into a
numerical lock-out safe. It was given as November 4th, 2018.
Question was, how were we supposed to format this date? Was it
supposed to be MM/DD/YY? We weren’t sure, especially since this
was in Canada and date formats, officially, should be
YYYY/MM/DD. Most people mix that up and do DD/MM/YY. Regardless,
the first unknown was how to format the date.
The second unknown was how many digits were required. Did we
need to include leading zeros? Did we use the whole year, or
shorten it to two digits? Who knows? Safes can have a variable
number of digits to their combinations.
Considering the safe would lock out after a few tries, and we
ALWAYS enter in a combination twice if we got it wrong the first
time, there was no way I was going to attempt an answer, even
though we knew the solution.
Unfortunately, I can come up with far too many examples of
ambiguities from the rooms I’ve played. The above example is an
ambiguity in the answer of a puzzle. But there can be
ambiguities in directions on how to solve, ambiguities in the
design of the puzzle path, and even ambiguities when deciding
what clues go with which puzzle.
Furthermore, ambiguities compound. If you have a puzzle that’s
ambiguous between two choices, don’t think “they can try the
other if the first doesn’t work.” What if there are other
ambiguities you didn’t foresee? What if the process of the
puzzle takes five minutes? Players don’t like to waste their
time in an escape room because the designer was too lazy to be
clear. I recall a multi-layered puzzle with at least three
ambiguities and my team hated the room as we spent 20 minutes
trying to iterate between different solutions.
Now, you may be thinking “So you want me to give the players the
answer and make it super easy?” Not at all!
A clue doesn’t need to be directions written on a slip of
paper. A clue can be inferred from the decor, it can be picked
up from patterns you’ve placed in the game play, it can be
pulled from the theme you’ve set. Cluing is an art and finding
ways to guide your players is one of the many challenges of
creating a puzzle.
If anything, I like to apply Scott Nicholson’s rule of “Ask Why”
to puzzles as well. “Why would a player solve it that way? Do
all the clues point in that direction?”
When beta testing a puzzle, see where the players have problems.
Here are further examples of questions players may be wondering
because of an unknown in your game. After reading this article,
you will notice how some of these questions will be taken care
of if you implement the rules.
- “What is important?” or “What is the puzzle?”
Some rooms make this intrinsically clear without obvious
signposting. However, when it is isn’t clear, people start to
head down rabbit holes.
- “What do I do next?”
Players shouldn’t spend a lot of time on this question.
Otherwise, it interrupts the flow of the game, hindering the
experience.
- “Where does this answer go?”
Ever solve a puzzle to get a four digit combination, only to
be deflated because you have five locks to try it out in?
- “Do I do it this way, or that way?”
If you constantly need to clarify between two answers, or
two methods to an answer, then you designed it wrong.
- “Is this a puzzle or a clue?”
Sometimes things are clear to a designer, but not to the
rest of the world because we don’t read minds.
- “Do I have everything I need for this puzzle?”
I’ve worked on a puzzle not realizing I needed more
information because the puzzle seemed solvable. This isn’t so
bad unless the puzzle is process intensive.
- The “Save ‘Til Later” Clue / Answer
Ever find a clue / trigger an event / receive a combination
however you find out it is only applicable at a later time in
the game? How will the player know it needs to be saved until
later? Unless the correlation is very strong, a clue will be
applied to every puzzle until the time it is needed and that is
very frustrating.
- “What’s this puzzle for? What? Nothing?!”
A red herring is a clue or puzzle intentionally created to
mislead the player. One reason why people hate these: you’ve
made the whole mechanic of escape rooms ambiguous. Now we can’t
even trust puzzles you give us are important.
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