![]() The release of Kinect and Move seemed to further the notion that the games of the future would be played with our bodies, not just our fingers.īut motion control has been, for the most part, a flop. The game was so much fun, and the technology so exciting, that I was sure I’d be playing motion-controlled adventures in no time. ![]() When I first played Wii Sports, the day of the Wii’s release, I thought the visionaries at Nintendo had revolutionized gaming forever. The Invisible Bow: Motion Control in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword For designers looking to add replay value, these games offer bold and unusual examples from which to draw. Both titles also share the critical feature of allowing the player to return to any puzzle as soon as it’s beaten and explore new solutions right away. Likewise, while the system of SpaceChem inherently allows for a wide variety of solutions, the method of feedback represents a creative and active effort on the part of Zachtronics to promote repeatability. It’s interesting that Double Fine chose to focus so heavily on that aspect they could easily have included multiple solutions without highlighting and rewarding them the way they did. The incentives in Stacking are more conventional and blatant, but no less effective. These encourage improvement without providing an impossibly high benchmark, and give the player eternal hope. In SpaceChem, it’s partly the histograms with multiple scores, and partly the system’s open-endedness. But both titles provide inducements that keep luring the player back. You aren’t required to attain a certain level of efficiency in SpaceChem, and you only have to beat each puzzle in Stacking once. But for me, the strongest motivation was perhaps the solutions themselves: even beyond the basic enjoyment of a puzzle solved, the delightful cutscenes were always worth the effort.Ī final note: neither game forces you to revisit puzzles. An overall completion percentage is shown whenever you load the game this increases with every different solution you find, whether or not you’ve beaten the puzzle before. Your hobo friend Levi records your triumphs with murals and statues, providing a conventional “trophy room”. ![]() If you beat a puzzle in every possible way, you can access a unique associated doll, often with a fun ability. The game provides many rewards for discovering new solutions. Unusually for an adventure game, you can try puzzles again the instant you beat them, and may do so as often as you want thereafter. This information is accessible from the pause menu as well, making it easy to check your progress anywhere. Whenever you approach an area with a puzzle, any solutions you’ve already found are listed by name, while others are shown by question marks this means you know exactly how many remain at any given time. Each of its puzzles has a number of quite specific solutions. A more punishing, less flexible system would undermine players’ confidence and discourage them from revisiting puzzles. If you’re determined to solve a puzzle within certain constraints, you’ll likely be able to manage it– eventually. ![]() This is because its system allows for a remarkable variety of solutions even if your high-level approach is poor, as mine often was, you can almost always make it work by pouring enough thought and effort into the details. While SpaceChem is one of the most intellectually taxing games I’ve ever played, it was ultimately never frustrating. You might then want to improve on an area where you did poorly, or further refine a point where you excelled. For example, your solution may have been inefficient in the elapsed cycles category, but if you used an unusually low number of reactors, you still have something to be proud of. As the designer himself has noted, “players who optimize for one criterion often do poorly in the others.” Because each is displayed separately, not as an aggregate score or grade, the odds of an encouraging result are higher. Three vectors are considered: cycles elapsed, reactors used, and symbols used. The game provides feedback histograms charting the player’s efficiency compared to everyone else who’s ever beaten the puzzle. Each game encourages players to revisit puzzles, even immediately after beating them. Zachtronics Industries’ SpaceChem and Double Fine’s Stacking both address this question. After figuring it out, why give a puzzle a second look? The designer has crafted a solution, and the player must simply work towards it. Once you beat a puzzle, you move on, right? Until you forget its solution, what else is there to do? Unlike problems of, say, strategy, diplomacy, or resource management, puzzles are not dynamic. Of Hobos and Histograms: Repeatable Puzzles in SpaceChem and Stacking
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