Cliche Puzzles

[MoodyBlues]

Forgive me if there's already a thread like this, but I've been thinking about puzzle design lately and wondering what kinds of puzzles to avoid.

What kinds of puzzles in adventure games do you think are overdone? I don't necessarily mean illogical puzzles - just the kind that pop up way too often.

Here's a few I'm tired of seeing:
- Feed an animal to make it your fwend for life. (It just doesn't work that way.  I've fed lots of cats, and most of them never give me a second look.)
- Distract a guard to get past him.  (So you're telling me the evil genius/warlord didn't have enough foresight to hire competent henchmen?)
- Use a key that you found lying in the middle of the floor two feet from the key's corresponding door.  (I KNOWS HOW 2 MANAG INVINTOREY LOLOL!!11)
- Escape from a room.  (This only really bothers me if it's the first puzzle.  I want to do some exploring first!)
- Save the world.  (If done right, this can be a good basis for a storyline.  However, I'm tired to seeing fantasy and sci-fi games where you know two minutes into the game that the fate of the universe is at stake instead of learning this gradually after twists and turns.)
- Do something with a mouse/mousehole.  (HONK-SHOE.)

[Jack Hare]

Anything where you have to find a key to get into a room, to find the next key to get into the next room, to find another key, yada yada.  This is more common in little puzzle games of the move-crates-and-get-to-exit type.  I'd go so far as to say that the appearance of a Gold Key anywhere in the game had better have a damn good excuse.

I don't know if it's overdone really, but I dislike puzzles which hinge on a typically nice character doing something mean and destructive, which happened a lot in Grim Fandango -- Manny may be willing to shoot people, but he doesn't usually act like the kind of guy who would pour scalding coffee on a mildly offensive bystander or force his best friend to vomit.  It would be fine in a game where the main character is just nasty in general, though.

I think that recipes in nearly any form -- especially gathering ingredients for a magic potion -- are pretty tired in the genre.

And of course, crate stacking is a trope that just has to die.

[Makeout Patrol]

Every time I finish an adventure game that doesn't have a maze/labyrinth in it I crack a beer and toast the designer.

[Laukku]

Getting a key from the other side of a locked door by using a small stick and a piece of paper. Way too obvious.

I don't know where does that trick originally come from, but its mere existance in a game makes me respect the designers a lot less.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Oh come on, mazes aren't very common in adventure games anymore!  They're ripe for abuse....er, use again!

The only puzzles that really bother me are the ones that clearly are in place to pad the game rather than provide something fun/different/interesting to do.  That and the 'get this for this person to get that for someone else' type puzzles.

[GarageGothic]

Getting a key from the other side of a locked door by using a small stick and a piece of paper. Way too obvious.

It seems that this is still considered quite clever outside of adventure gaming circles. I just saw it used in Neil Gaiman's recent novel 'The Graveyard Book' and groaned my way through the page or two of meticulous performance of the task.
I always wanted to make a locked door puzzle where the newspaper-pencil trick seemed the obvious solution but (of course) didn't work due to real-life obstacles such as, well, door sills. I mean, how big does the gap under a door have to be not only to fit an old-fashioned key but sometimes also a bloody newspaper like in 'Post Mortem'?

[DanielH]

Get item...use item...talk to character...pass arbitrary barrier...get item...use item...talk to character...pass arbitrary barrier...end boss...get item...use item within time limit...watch cutscene...end.

With a decent plot and backstory, and well developed characters, this isn't always a bad formula.

But with bad storytelling, this becomes a nightmare.

Great storytelling + Bad puzzle design = Good Game

Great storytelling + Great puzzle design = OMG HOLY GRAIL UNPOSSIBLE

[Ghost]

I agree, there isn't a "bad puzzle" as such (safe the hush puppy puzzle in Simon 2), because if you wrap it up with a good explanation, you can get away with so many cliches!

What I hate, though, is the "use and dispose" approach. You go through a lot of trouble to get a certain item, then use it once and know that you will not need to glance at it a second time- because it did its job and is now dead weight.
Sam&Max did a good job here by making you use the extendable hand several time (with a magnet/cup/glove attached), and DOTT at least had some "fun items" (like the ink) you could use on all characters for a snapy response.

[Layabout]

Getting a key from the other side of a locked door by using a small stick and a piece of paper. Way too obvious.

It seems that this is still considered quite clever outside of adventure gaming circles. I just saw it used in Neil Gaiman's recent novel 'The Graveyard Book' and groaned my way through the page or two of meticulous performance of the task.
I always wanted to make a locked door puzzle where the newspaper-pencil trick seemed the obvious solution but (of course) didn't work due to real-life obstacles such as, well, door sills. I mean, how big does the gap under a door have to be not only to fit an old-fashioned key but sometimes also a bloody newspaper like in 'Post Mortem'?

You obviously have neglected to watch the Ben Jordan Film, where this puzzle is recreated, in all its glory.

[m0ds]

Indeed. And if you think about it a little more, you'll realise what BJ does in that movie is completely impossible & unprobable...any ideas why? 

I'd say the "you need one thing off someone so they make you do 3 things for them" puzzle is very cliche. But I can hardly complain. I've just written one into my game

[Andail]

The paper-under-door-to-get-key-puzzle is way older than adventure games. I remember reading it in a children's detective book that was written in the fifties.

I think any puzzle can work excellently if presented in a good context and for a logical reason. Any puzzle can be awful if it's just random and illogical.

Some typical puzzles (or puzzle-types, really) I don't like:
* Pixelhunting. It encourages the player to click everywhere on the screen not to miss something, and it ruins the gameplay.
* Repetative clicking. Ok, so if I click on the character a fourth time, he'll tell me the secret.
* Extremely realistic/technical puzzles. Like "use knife to remove isolation from cable, use pliers to twist cables around eachother, combine batteries with screwdriver, etc etc". Heck, if I want to mend a radio, I can do that in real life.
* Surprise-effects-puzzles. This is quite common even in professional games. Items have hidden qualities that don't make sense, and to discover the effect you must try everything on everything, and that also ruins the gameplay. For some reason, Space Quest comes to mind, even though I can't point out a specific puzzles right now.

[Babar]

You know, I don't think I've ever encountered the paper-under-door puzzle in an adventure game. They didn't seem to be in any of the famous ones that could possibly have it (Gabriel Knights, Indiana Jones, etc).

I do remember reading it in some Enid Blyton book as a kid, though (Famous Five?). Heh.

About clichéd puzzles....I dunno. Once I get the mechanism of the puzzles in a game, I'm pretty much put off that aspect of the game. I mean, you realise that you are getting this item to give to this person, who will give you this item to give to this person who will give you this item to use with this other item to get past a superficial and pointless obstacle.

[Laukku]

You know, I don't think I've ever encountered the paper-under-door puzzle in an adventure game. They didn't seem to be in any of the famous ones that could possibly have it (Gabriel Knights, Indiana Jones, etc).

It's at least in Broken Sword 3 and in Mystery of The Mummy. The former is reasonably famous.

The paper-under-door-to-get-key-puzzle is way older than adventure games.

Yes, I knew that. And that's the main reason I consider it to be cliché.

[Vince Twelve]

Getting a key from the other side of a locked door by using a small stick and a piece of paper. Way too obvious.

It seems that this is still considered quite clever outside of adventure gaming circles. I just saw it used in Neil Gaiman's recent novel 'The Graveyard Book' and groaned my way through the page or two of meticulous performance of the task.

Does anyone watch The Mentalist?  Just a few weeks ago, the mystery of the week involved a girl dead in a room with a guy that had been locked from the inside.  The guy inside claimed to be innocent, but since the room was locked from the inside he was thrown in jail.  Well, luckily for him, the "brilliant" mentalist came and noticed that there was significant room under the door to pull the old newspaper under the door trick with the added twist of putting a string back through the lock, tying it to the key, and pulling the key back into the lock from the other side.  "OMG!" the police all shouted, "He might be innocent afterall!"   :

Oh come on, mazes aren't very common in adventure games anymore!  They're ripe for abuse....er, use again!

I agree.  I think the hate directed towards mazes in adventure games have been due to repeated misuse.  Poor implementation and a lack of proper integration into the story have given them a bad rap.  I took the general hate directed at mazes as a challenge, and have included one in Resonance to demonstrate how I think they should be done.  And if that strikes fear into your heart, then I urge you to wait and see it, because you haven't seen a maze done like this in an adventure game before!

[Mr Flibble]

From my own attempts at design, these are a few of the clichés I found myself writing in, to quickly dispose of.

-Replacing a fuse with a paperclip
-Fixing some kind of machinery in a dull, spare parts, sort of way. I don't think there's anything wrong with this per se, but every time I wrote it down I was just copying the spark-plug puzzle from FOA, so it was ripped from the design document.

Also, any puzzle which requires you to do something particularly long-winded for a fairly common item. Like completing a very long quest for a box of matches or something, when in real life, you'd sooner just go out and buy some. So"Unnecessary constraints on items" is my gripe, or being arbitrarily limited to a set of items (unless the player is in an enclosed space/unable to travel to look for other items).

[Dualnames]

Key on door...definetely cliched.

[Jack Hare]

(If any of you didn't happen to catch the thread, a strongly related topic has come up before on the forum, which became >this post< in the AGS Wiki.)

There's one thing I just remembered has been annoying me to no end, something that seems to be used in damn near every horror game (most of the examples I'm thinking of are Flash games or shooters, but I think the same rule applies in adventure games) -- the %^&*% INSANE PERSON'S JOURNAL ENTRIES.

Usually they're pages scattered all over the game, yet curiously in chronological order.  They all tell the EXACT SAME STORY: Part One, "Oh, I love my new house/job/asylum cell, but that one person I love dearly is acting strange..."; Part Two, "Strange noises and events continue, poor Bill was killed with the passcode in his pocket, I'm worried about Loved One, I hear screams in the night"; Part Three, "I pray only that someone will find this record and end this terrible evil, it's coming to get me now argh argh argh".

The worst part is that the damn things never advance the story, because the Disturbed Journalist is always too busy being ominous and vague to actually write any details worth knowing.  But you usually have to read them anyway, because sometimes -- SOMETIMES -- there will be vital puzzle information in them.

Well, at least, the writer thinks that putting clues in the journal entries means you'll have to read them, put that isn't exactly true -- in fact, all you have to do is scan the pages for numbers, pictures, and lists of capitalized (or bold, or otherwise distinct) text, because the text itself has never been used to convey any more information than character names.  What's scary is that I don't know of ANY exceptions to the rule of "scan for numbers, pictures and lists".

Anyway.  Done venting.  But I can't believe I didn't think of this last night, it annoys me so much. :

PS regarding good writing salvaging a bad puzzle: Similar issues come up in any artistic field -- it's always true that a stylish, original, or just plain clean and honest approach can salvage something that's become hackneyed.  But lists like this are still a very useful tool, not as "Things that Must Never Be Done", but as warning signs -- if you spot an old overused trope in your work, it's a warning to pause and ask whether you ARE doing something fresher, better, or even deliberately sarcastic with it, or just putting it there because "that's what goes in this sort of scene".

PPS regarding the key-n-paper trick: maybe I'm just being provincial, but has anyone even built a door with this kind of lock in the last thirty years?  The only place I've ever even seen a keyhole you could look through was on the basement door of a very old house -- all the other locks in the house had been replaced with modern ones, which you just can't poke a key out of.

Admittedly, a lot of games are set in very old houses, often set back when the houses were new.  But even then...who locks a door and leaves the key in it?

[Ghost]

But even then...who locks a door and leaves the key in it?

The same person that leaves the most powerful weapons and lots of ammo in a small room directly in front of the evil mastermind's secret hideout.

The same person that puts a sign next to the evil mastermind's secret hideout, saying in big flashing letters: "Teh Evulz Mastamidns Secrit Hidout!"

The same person that outfits feeble minions with incredibly powerful artifacts and weapons that they drop when dying, yet are unable to use to defend themselves.

The same person that litters the wilderness with treasure chests, all of which can be opened with a simple, cheap skeleton key.

The same person that somehow arranges it so that all members of your party have this ONE special ability that makes them indisposable for the game to finish...

In other words, GAME DESIGNERS.

And you can't trust these, they still believe that you can heal wounds by STEPPING on a medikit.

[bicilotti]

But even then...who locks a door and leaves the key in it?

The same person that leaves the most powerful weapons and lots of ammo in a small room directly in front of the evil mastermind's secret hideout.

The same person that puts a sign next to the evil mastermind's secret hideout, saying in big flashing letters: "Teh Evulz Mastamidns Secrit Hidout!"

The same person that outfits feeble minions with incredibly powerful artifacts and weapons that they drop when dying, yet are unable to use to defend themselves.

The same person that litters the wilderness with treasure chests, all of which can be opened with a simple, cheap skeleton key.

The same person that somehow arranges it so that all members of your party have this ONE special ability that makes them indisposable for the game to finish...

In other words, GAME DESIGNERS.

And you can't trust these, they still believe that you can heal wounds by STEPPING on a medikit.

You're a poet.

[MoodyBlues]

Ugh.  I'm with you on the journal entries, Jack Hare.  The worst thing about them is that they rarely read like normal journals; even if I was being haunted by some scary something-or-other, that wouldn't be the ONLY thing I'd write about, at least in the beginning.   And yes, most of them tend to tell the same story.