Mini-Puzzles

I've talked of minigames before, in my previous post about game theory, but when gamers say "minigame" they mean a complete game-within-a-game. Run around in a platformer, take control of a gun emplacement, play Tetris or Breakout or Artillery, break down a wall -- then go back to running around.

The station-placement "minigame" in Transport Tycoon is somewhat gamelike, but the score is ephemeral. There's no win or lose; there's just "better" and "worse", and those measures are fuzzy. I think of it as a puzzle, since there is no opponent, no time limit. There's a goal, and a rough measure of score, and that's it.

What's great about Transport Tycoon is there's a ton of these puzzles in the game. Station placement, track placement, route optimization, and building fast & efficient intersections ("junctions" in the parlance) are all puzzles. And I like puzzles. :) I've got a handful of Hanayama cast puzzles on my desk at work, burrs and other wooden puzzles at home, and I can solve a Rubik's cube. So the game fits me.

One of the main differences between mini-games and mini-puzzles is that the puzzles are integral to gameplay; they are almost meta-games, in that doing such puzzles well achieves a goal beyond what the game sets for you. There's a group of players obsessed with crafting elegant junctions -- both fast and eye-pleasing.

This is definitely the sort of mechanic that makes every game better. Not every player needs to enjoy it; seeing the creations of others is an incentive to try your own hand. These complex junctions are inspiring. As with seeing high-level players in WoW, or the high scores on your favorite XBLA game, knowing it is possible is encouragement to try it yourself. Whether it's jealousy or greed or curiosity or admiration that drives players to achieve the same power doesn't matter. Because your players want to play more.

Would you rather make a game that other designers rate highly, or a game that players love?

My answer is, clearly, the latter. I'm offended--morally offended--by designers that look at games like Myst or The Sims and say "I don't know why people like those games, they're so stupid." That's a topic in itself that I might discuss later but let's gloss over it for now.

Or maybe not. My point of view is not to make games because I want to express myself as a designer -- I want to make something that people will enjoy. Some money would be nice, too.
My goal in this post and in this blog (as it relates to game design) is to figure out how to entertain players.

So back to the topic: I think minigames are 'cheating'. It's easy enough to 'design' a minigame because they are, generally, just executions of known designs. There's some GBA title that I remember being mentioned on Penny-Arcade that's like a billion different 15-second minigames so obviously there's room to stretch. (I feel like I should go look that game up.) Part of the power of the minigame comes from a player's experience with the genre of minigame, however. The power of a minipuzzle by contrast is that it forces the player to make a decision about how he is going to play the game proper.

Take track layout in Transport Tycoon. Building a cheap but speedy rail line around a mountain is no easy task. Yet how that player builds the line affects how his game develops -- if there's enough of a detour to go grab another town easily, if his line will be easy to upgrade, if he needs to buy different engines just to handle this one tricky stretch, etc. And basic stuff like how much he spent on it, and how efficiently the mountain line gets goods to and from each side of the hill.

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Now, do I have a conclusion? Hmm. The lesson, if any, is "add minipuzzles." The tricky part is how. Sounds like a good future topic, eh? Part II in this series explores several good minipuzzles and examines what makes for a good minipuzzle. Part III, not yet written, will look at ways to add and improve minipuzzles.