Logic Puzzles

My entry in the One Room Game Competition 2008 came in last.

At least now I can ask about putting logic puzzles in interactive fiction.
If you have not played my loosing entry, you can download it here:
http://www.avventuretestuali.com/download/badtoast.zip

Now for a somewhat minor spoiler (stop reading if you want to try the game
yourself).

The core of my entry is the puzzle. I thought it was relatively easy to find
the three clues (I may be wrong). You are confronted with five switches:
red, black, green, yellow, and blue. You have to throw all five switches in
the correct order to escape. You have three clues:

1. The red switch must be thrown before the black switch but after the green
switch.
2. The yellow switch must be thrown right after the green switch.
3. The blue switch must be thrown after the black switch.

That is the entire puzzle. There are no more clues. I put a rather detailed
description on how to solve the puzzle in the walk through.

Here is my question: is this type of logic puzzle appropriate for
interactive fiction? (why or why not?)

In my game "Bad Toast" if you throw the wrong switch you die. This was a
deliberate choice. I wanted the player to use logic to solve the puzzle, not
trial and error. There are no additional hints. You have all the information
you need to solve the puzzle. But you have to use logic.

As logic puzzles go, my puzzle was very simple. PennyPress (a.k.a.
PennyDellPress) publishes a magazine of logic puzzles:
https://www.pennydellpuzzles.com/default.aspx

You can download some sample logic puzzles from PennyPress here:
https://www.pennydellpuzzles.com/free_puzzles/default.aspx

All of the free puzzles from PennyPress are a lot more complicated than the
rather simple one I put in Bad Toast.

I started outlining my next game. I was planning on putting in a much more
difficult puzzle. I planned on requiring the player to complete several
quests in order to obtain each of the clues to the main puzzle.

Since the core of the game is solving a puzzle, what should happen to the
character if they specify the wrong solution? Isn't killing the character
appropriate?

In Bad Toast, you could solve the problem by trial and error but you would
die quite a few times. You die at most five tries for the first switch, four
for the second and so on, for a total of 14 tries (5 + 4 + 3 + 2). On
average, you should solve the puzzle by trial and error in 7 tries. For a
more complicated puzzle, you probably would not solve it by trial and error
because it would take way too many tries.

Is anyone interested in this type of game?


Jeffrey McArthur
cell: 610-389-0734
home: 610-450-6115
email: jeffmcarthur.TakeThisOut@comcast.net
http://www.jeffreymcarthur.com

On Dec 30, 9:41 am, Jeffrey McArthur <jeffmcart... DeleteThis @comcast.net> wrote:
> My entry in the One Room Game Competition 2008 came in last.
>
> At least now I can ask about putting logic puzzles in interactive fiction..

<snip>

> In my game "Bad Toast" if you throw the wrong switch you die. This was a
> deliberate choice. I wanted the player to use logic to solve the puzzle, not
> trial and error. There are no additional hints. You have all the information
> you need to solve the puzzle. But you have to use logic.

<more snip>

> Since the core of the game is solving a puzzle, what should happen to the
> character if they specify the wrong solution? Isn't killing the character
> appropriate?

I haven't played your game. But here's what I think: killing the
character doesn't actually stop anyone from using trial and error. It
just means they type ">THROW WRONG SWITCH. [damn!] UNDO. THROW CORRECT
SWITCH". Or, if you've disabled UNDO, they might have to ">SAVE.
THROW SWITCH. RESTORE". Etc.

Since the core of your game is solving a puzzle, there are going to be
two kinds of players:

1. Players who like solving (these kinds of) puzzles. You don't have
to worry about preventing trial-and-error for these players, because
they won't be using it. They'll solve your puzzle voluntarily and
enjoy it.

2. Players who don't like solving puzzles. If you allow these players
to use trial-and-error, they'll miss the fun part of your game, but so
what? It sounds like there's nothing else notable in the game besides
puzzles, so they weren't going to enjoy your game anyway.

--
Daphne