Guidelines for new crafting puzzles

Rule 1: Unique puzzles are superior to rehashed ones. This doesn't mean you can't take a puzzle and add a twist to it, either by changing the objective or the means of completion - and then throw a few more turns in. This just means that if you take a puzzle such as Tetris, just add a 'wildcard' piece or two, and slap a new name on it, it won't fly. Suggestions of actually using puzzles such as Tetris, unchanged, in the game... well, that'll give your thread a Booched rating.

Rule 2: Puzzles must not be mathematically solveable. What this means is that even if ye've got a fair hand at algorithms, you shouldn't be able to effectively solve a puzzle for the best score. Take, for example, the well-known Lights Out puzzle, or the fifteen-piece swapping puzzles we all played with as kids... these can be easily solved by a computer, merely by running through the effects. Therefore, it is vastly preferable to include a level of ever-changing randomness in a puzzle, such as a 'piece drop' random number generator (take Carpentry for example).

There are a few more rules of thumb, but those are the major ones. Among the more minor ones, crafting puzzles:

1. Should be more relaxing than duty puzzles, and therefore should have a lax timer. Part of the reason for the no timer guideline is that untimed puzzles couldn't fit into duty slots. Distilling was once felt to not quite meet the no timer ideal.
2. Should fit in the theme of the game, and therefore have a similarity to the work at hand.
3. Should have a level of simplicity that'll keep the learning curve nice and light.

A pure memory or pure slider game is not only not original enough, but it has no depth. Duty and crafting puzzles require a scoring distribution, because it is your placement within it that determines the puzzle's effect.

External links

• Crafting Puzzle Project forum