Problems with level design...
...especially in logic or puzzle games. I generally don't criticize games publicly. Games are difficult to make just from a technical standpoint, once you factor in user experience, games design and that elusive quality of "fun" they're nearly impossible to make. The games I do sometimes criticize, or rather the developers I like to criticize are the ones that circumvent this arduous creative process and chose to copy the design, aesthetics, and "fun" of another game verbatim. Today I'm going to point that criticism at one of my own games and by association at myself.
There is a tendency amongst designers when designing puzzle games to make levels more challenging by making them larger and more complex. The original little soldiers is no exception to this classic design flaw.
This is a screenshot of the "Jam Packed" level from the original Little Soldiers game. It's full of repeating elements, you can't even see the exit goal and it's not clear what you are supposed to be doing in the level. Essentially to play this level, you must try different things, failing repeatedly until something randomly seems to work at which point you hop though the exit and breath a sigh of relief.
I'm not your typical puzzle gamer, but I'm pretty sure you'd have to be masochistic to consider this success though repeated failure as "fun". I've since realized that the "fun" in a puzzle game of this sort is in learning the rules about how items behave and how they interact. Once the player has figured out the "trick" to an item it really isn't enjoyable to use that item over and over again on increasingly large levels, unless of course every time they use the item they learn something new about it's behavior.
In short the challenge or fun in the game is in learning about the objects, once they are mastered there's very little satisfaction in repeatedly applying them in larger and larger problems. A smaller level that teaches the player something new, is more enjoyable then a large level that has the player applying skills they've already mastered repeatedly. This sort of thing is intuitive in retrospect, but I've seen this same level design issue crop up in a lot of physics based or item based puzzle games.
What do you think? what makes a logic/puzzle game fun?
What's really nice is when you can use something in various ways. You have the 'standard' (taught) use, and then perhaps alternative things you can do with it that almost make it feel like you are breaking the game's rules in how you use it. It gives the player a feeling of one-up-manship on the game maker even though it was intended. Of course.. repeated use of this 'trick' destroys its worth, but every so often, it can be thrown back in to make sure they remember it and perhaps combine it with something else.
As for 'teaching' the player how to play.. half the fun is (strangely) through trial and error instead of being taught. However, levels should be designed such that what you want the player to learn is required to complete the level. But telling them directly destroys part of the fun of the 'breaking the puzzle' or 'cracking the code'.
One small game that I fairly recently found lovely in this respect was 'Applicate' from 'On'. (http://www.eyezmaze.com/eyezblog_en/blog/2008/0...)
This goes to the extreme of not actually telling the player anything... the object, the controls... but it works very well given the games simple rule set.
-Z-
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