this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
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Showerthoughts
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I think your definition of puzzle games is pretty flawed, to be honest. A puzzle does not provide additional difficulty once you've identified how the pieces go together, consequently a game should behave similarly to qualify as a puzzle game. The dichotomy is between conceptualisation versus execution.
Puzzle games can be solved or "won" by identifying the solution. Not-puzzle games require execution.
Guitar Hero and OSU! are not puzzle games. Games like RTSes and MOBAs can be argued to have puzzle elements in terms of strategy and meta, but knowing the optimal thing to do will still not give you victory which imo disqualifies them as outright puzzle games.
If you have 2 minutes to solve a puzzle, is it no longer a puzzle game?
If moving certain colored pieces requires a button combo or sequence, instead of a simple action, is this no longer a puzzle game?
EDIT:
Also, by this logic, Tetris is not a puzzle game.
Knowing the optimal thing to do can be seen as but a higher order puzzle.
Yes, clearly. It still behaves the way a puzzle - or puzzle game - would: knowledge of the solution trivialises the content. It's just a puzzle game with a timer.
Depends on how the combo works. Is there an element of skill involved? If it's like a rhythm game I would just call it a puzzle/rhythm game. Otherwise it's just a puzzle game with extra steps.
For me, if the main challenge of the game is figuring out the puzzle, then it's mainly a puzzle game. If a measure of skill is required in the actual execution of beating the game it is no longer a pure puzzle game - but it can still contain puzzle elements of course.
EDIT: I would agree that Tetris is not a puzzle game.
But knowing the right strategy and item build in DotA or LoL means fuck all if you can't mechanically execute your hero properly, which - in my opinion - disqualifies them as "puzzle games".
That was in my OP though, that most games can be thought of as puzzle games with extra steps.
This is quite interesting to me.
My main point of this post is to highlight how the genres and categories we have for games breaks down upon examination and I guess changes over time.
I would say that most people either have or would call Tetris basically the most popular puzzle game.
When it came out it was basically the titular, archetypal 'puzzle' game.
I think I see what’s happening here. There are some pure puzzle games that require no execution skills at all. In the opposite end of the spectrum you have games that are all about skill and execution with no puzzles included. I guess you could call them pure skill games to make the distinction clearer.
Most games appear to be a mixture of the two extremes, so they sit somewhere on this spectrum. In order to win, you have to know what to do and execute your plan well enough. I wouldn’t call them pure puzzle games, but they do have some puzzle elements in them. If the puzzle aspects are central to the gameplay experience, it could make sense to categorize them as puzzle games of some sort, even if execution and skills matter to some extent.
I just don't get where you're getting "most games" from. If you would have phrased it like "many games can be viewed as puzzle games if you really think about it" you would have maybe had more people agree with you.
I understand your reductive approach - it's just that there are so many games it doesn't apply to that I can never agree with "most games".
I think that’s an important distinction to make when exploring what is or isn’t a puzzle game. There are lots of games where flawless execution matters as much as knowing what to do. For example, FPS games lean heavily towards the execution aspect while mixing in some solution identification too.
The purest examples of each game design style are also interesting. For example, you can play chess through snail mail, so being physically able to perform specific actions isn’t really necessary for victory. In the opposite end of the spectrum you have the simplest form of darts, which is all about skill. Just throw all the darts at the center and you’ll win. There are also more complicated versions for those who want to play a game that sits somewhere in the middle of this puzzle-execution specturm. Now that I think of it, most computer games seem to be a mixture of the two styles.