![]() ![]() Water diminishes the effect of other potions Potions affect those numbers in a unique way, for example: ![]() Therefore, an object can be represented with a vector of these numbers Īs an example, a crate is A good example of this is traditional board games, like chess and go - at no point there is a question about what the pieces do or how they interact, yet situations arising on the board are often unique and cannot be easily brute-forced even by computers.Ī very simple example I have came up with for this post is the following:Įverything in your world has parameters that are represented with numbers, for instance:Įntities have a number of Health Points (HP), which represents the durability of an object or a characterĮntities have a number representing the speed of an object It's very difficult to have something that is simple at its components, interactions and outcomes, yet still surprising in combinations. However, if everything is clear, that is a very thin line away from everything being predictable and boring. At no point should a player be wondering what's happening, or how is something possible. Thus, logic of the pieces (ingredients) and their interactions must be absolutely clear to everyone. If the logic is too obscure, players will give up. Once trial and error is no longer an option, the only tool players have left is logic. This is surprisingly easy to achieve because of the combinatorial explosion. A simple way to do this is to make sure the number of combinations is so large, it's not feasible to try everything. Still, if you insist on this particular type, perhaps out of intellectual curiosity, the first thing you do is make sure that "trial and error" cannot be a solution. Given the choice, I would pick another system. I despise this type of "alchemy", as there's nothing "alchemic" about it, in my opinion. their inputs, though, this can result in an exponential number of possible chains, greatly lessening the need for the player to be on your exact wavelength every time. ![]() If many nodes in the combination graph are flexible w.r.t. Or, if they're on the critical path (say, you need to invent keys to get past some gate), can you make it so solving any of n different puzzles is sufficient (say, you need keys, rope, or a battering ram)? If you require one specific chain of combinations to advance in the game, that's making it very likely that SOME combination that seems obvious to you is absolute moon-logic to the player. People seem to love bizarre and arcane time-sinks so long as they're not actually required! I think it's that feeling of getting-one-over-on-the-game, making something overpowered or that you're not "supposed" to have yet, even when the designer planned it that way all along. ![]() but it's optional, so the players who enjoy tinkering with that kind of thing can sink hours into it, and everyone else can ignore it. Lots of RPGs have arcane rules for crafting/smithing/alchemy where stuff gets mashed together and results in surprising things. (And I don't feel like a built-in hint system really fixes that, if your player regularly needs a system that helps them avoid solving your puzzles, that's a symptom of a deeper problem.)Īre these puzzles on the critical path? If the player is not required to do it, then it's not a big deal. )īasically, any time you get beyond like 30 of this kind of puzzle in the same game, it's pretty much inevitable that some of the combinations are going to be terrible. (If you haven't read it, it's a good time to read the classic article on this. As you say, this eventually becomes a matter of tedious trial-and-error, as all the combinations that are obvious to the player have been tried, and all that's left are combinations requiring adventure-game moon-logic. Broadly speaking, this was the dominant puzzle type of the 1990s graphic adventure game - rub your entire inventory on everything in the game, including everything else in your inventory, until something works, then do that again with the result. ![]()
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