[Design Notes] On Closing Rabbit Holes


I watched a YouTube Play through of my game by Richard Hawkins of @SciFiUk , and I love watching people play my game, especially if it's a live play through because then I can follow their thought processes.

This is very important for me because my main goal is to close off rabbit holes.

What do I mean by that? When I create a puzzle, I want to make sure that all the clues I create will point to one answer and one answer only. If my puzzle can have multiple answers with the clues I've given, then I've done something wrong. 

And many times, when I create a puzzle, I will find my beta testers will think of a solution which makes total sense and I didn't close it off. 

So if you watch that YouTube play through, around the 36 minute mark, you will see what everyone is getting stuck on.

I have found my current beta testers didn't have problems with the first puzzle, but I'm finding a number of people are having troubles!

And many people are trying to apply the knowledge that the opposite of blue is red. 

So, I'm going to try something different this time, I'm going to try the opposite of green. Which is... also red, but I'm hoping people won't go down that path (although, they may). If that doesn't work, then I will remove the red and find another thing to be opposite. OR, I may just change the whole puzzle together and remove the colours. We'll see how that goes. (And I just realized that the red/green thing will be problematic for colour-blind people). 

I guess I'm going to make another update. Who knows if this new change will cause problems. I should try and do an A/B testing of this. 

In the end, it's something I need to fix. Not the fault of the players. *sigh* Puzzle testing is hard.

Get Present Quest

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