Puzzle games are not my favorite genre, but I
think it’s mainly because I absolutely suck at them. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen better gameplay
from a blind beaver and this happens without fail every puzzle game I play. Nothing is more
demoralizing than being stuck on the same screen for an hour with no idea of what to do or where to
start, but that’s the price you pay when you have a brain the size of a small pebble. That’s why
I was so surprised to play 3 puzzle games over the last year that not only captured my interest
with unique ideas and clever design, but also felt really…easy. And I don’t mean that as a bad thing
at all, the opposite in fact. Somehow these titles took me and my dumb smebble brain and made me feel
like a genius. Let’s talk about how they did it. The first game I played was Cocoon, which is the
latest from Jeppe Carlsen known best for his work on Limbo and Inside, or if you’re
like me, his expertly crafted rhythm game, 140 (yes that is me getting the world record in that
game almost 10 years ago). So I was definitely expecting a quality release when I downloaded
it, but what I did not expect was for it to absolutely blow my mind into a million pieces.
For the uninitiated, the main hook of Cocoon is that you can carry these orbs on your back but
they actually house full worlds that you can leap into to solve further puzzles, so eventually you
gain new abilities and multiple orbs to juggle at once as well as taking orbs into other orbs,
yeah it's some Inception level stuff for sure. The thing that was so fascinating about it
though, is that I never got stuck - for a game that seems so mind-bending on paper it does such
a good job of teaching you mechanics and slowly ramping up the challenge that it always seemed
logical and naturally intuitive. But again, it’s not so easy that it feels boring or disengaging
either, and this was a very specific game design goal for Jeppe from the get go - “when I stopped
asking myself is this puzzle challenging enough and instead asked is this puzzle stimulating
enough, Cocoon became a much better game.” “One design trick is to always show as many
points of interest as possible at the first screen when you jump into an orb world. Did I
forget something in here? Oh, there it is.” “When beating a boss you gain a new orb ability
but a more subtle reward is that the level design becomes linear for a while (one world, one
orb), so that the game always feels well paced”. You see, the key to making a multi-world exploring
puzzler is to reign back the complexity and simplify down to its core essentials. There’s
literally only 1 button in this game, you can interact with objects and move around - that’s
it. There’s no dialogue or text boxes, everything is taught to you through gameplay. Forget
collectibles, branching paths or hidden alcoves, there’s very little fluff along the linear path
leaving you to solely focus on the task at hand. Plus there’s rarely more than just a few objects
on screen at a time so the solution is always going to be a bit closer than you would think.
They also made sure the sound design gives strong feedback to let you know you’re on the right track
as you deconstruct puzzles. Jeppe wanted to make sure you develop a level of trust with the game,
like ‘hey you got this, and I got your back’. It’s simply a master class in intrigue, evolution
and making the complex feel understandable. Next I played Chants of Sennaar which is all about
exploring an unfamiliar world and piecing together a language you don’t understand through context
clues around you. As you see symbols from word bubbles or signs in a village, it will show you
pictures in a notebook that you have to mix and match the correct answers to, and similar to
Return of the Obra Dinn, it will lock in your answers if you get an entire page correct.
Unlike Obra Dinn, though, which was a game I found especially challenging because there are
near limitless possibilities when you’re piecing together how the crewmates met their death,
there’s only a small pool of words in Chants of Sennaar so it doesn’t feel nearly as overwhelming.
If you don’t know a specific set of words yet, you can always continue to hunt for more clues
and eventually the process of elimination can help narrow down the last few solutions.
One of my favorite features is that you can type in a guess of what you think
it is before finalizing its definition, so if you’re at least in the ballpark of the right
idea, it can help you piece together the rest of a sentence and understand the main thought
someone is saying. It doesn’t hold your hand, but there are numerous ways to go about finding
the puzzle pieces, and then once you’ve understood the ins and outs of a particular language’s
grammar and syntax, it tests you with a final challenge, which then opens up the next area
with an entirely new set of symbols to decode. What’s so clever here is that some languages
have certain rules that are not followed in others so for example, plurals in the first
area are denoted by having two of the same thing next to each other, but in the next location
a specific symbol is used for plurals. Likewise, another language used by scientists holds
all numbers so you need to understand how they count and how to increase from tens to
hundreds, etc. Each new tribe has its own flair and personality so even if they use
the same words it might be described in a totally different way. And then of course at
the end it asks you to translate between the languages which is especially rewarding as it
almost feels like you’re learning a real-life skill in the process. But because it takes its
time to introduce these concepts I never felt like I was out of my depth even though this was
a type of game I’d normally fail miserably at. Finally and most recently, I tried out Isles
of the Sea and Sky which apparently is a Sokoban puzzle game? I don’t know what that
word means but you’re pushing blocks around and stuff. Normally I wouldn’t really give this
style a try but the pixel art really drew me in and a few other elements as well - once you find
your turtle companion it turns into an open world where you can explore more islands depending on
the number of stars you collect so if you feel stuck in a particular area you can always go
see if something new has opened up. Also, each island has a powerup to increase your mobility and
elemental avatars once you collect enough gems to switch up puzzles and increase your flexibility
in how you solve them, so in a lot of ways it ends up feeling like an adventure/exploration
game just as much as a single screen puzzler. And yes it has the trappings that I normally
dislike in the genre of having way too many elements to think about at once, but one key
change made it feel entirely different - some blocks unlock permanently once you destroy
them, which forever changes how that screen can be completed. This means that even if a puzzle
is more challenging and takes awhile to unpack, along the way you’re making incremental
progress that either speeds up the process or makes the final solution possible if you
restart the screen. There’s often multiple rewards in a single puzzle so you can solve
it one way and then start again using the pieces in a different way to get another.
The result is an experience that never felt frustrating or like I hit a roadblock - there’s
always more islands to explore, the powerups constantly change how you approach challenges,
and as you make bite-sized progress it makes sections easier to move around in so the push and
pull of difficulty is always in a nice, rewarding balance. Plus the power ups make backtracking to
old areas just as enjoyable because new sections are constantly becoming available to you. Another
problem I often have with other puzzle games is that it’s so easy to just look up answers if you
get stuck. Isles of Sea and Sky skirts this issue by having some puzzles randomized each playthrough
so the answers can’t be easily replicated, but this does require a lot of trust in your
game design to ensure the player doesn’t get frustrated and feels like they have the skill
to overcome the challenge. The beauty is, that unlike the first two games, Isles of Sea and Sky
is chocked full of secrets and hidden pathways, so while some of the puzzles are a bit harder than
Cocoon or Chants of Sennaar there’s simply more to do and find when you need a brain break. Keys,
stars, gems, medallions, they all are in service of unlocking the final set of levels at the heart
of the island once you’ve mastered the mechanics. So what did I learn from my foray into easier
puzzle games? Well, it seems that the best design doesn’t come from how much can be crammed into a
particular puzzle, but rather teaching the player all the pieces necessary before dropping them
into the deep end. Even if a particular concept is interesting or has a lot of potential, it doesn’t
mean that it needs to be in the final game - Jeppe actually cut several other orb powerups from
Cocoon because he didn’t want to convolute or overwhelm the experience, so even at its hardest
you’re never balancing too many elements at once. Also, feeling smart and feeling stimulated can
be different things, or rather, you don’t have to have the most in-depth puzzle for the player
to still have a beautiful a-ha moment. It’s about pacing and how the puzzle is presented
to the player, not necessarily magnitude. I even learned how to be a better puzzle solver
as well - like how to work backwards from the solution rather than just brute forcing
pieces around trying to get somewhere. Okay I need this star, but to get that I
have to open this lock but that’s blocked by this so my first step is to get over that
hole. Okay I got it, let’s do this. In a lot of ways, these easier puzzle games feel like a gateway
drug to the rest of the genre, and it’s been such a breath of fresh air compared to others I
had gotten frustrated with in the past. That’s why we truly need more of them so that as many
people as possible can experience the perfect epiphany that only a true puzzler can provide.
What’s your favorite puzzle game? Is there one in particular that really got you into the genre
in the first place? What was so special about that one for you? Tell me in the comments
below and let’s talk about it. Thanks for watching and welcome back to the Summer of Snoman,
more videos to come soon. Stay frosty my friends!
