30 Puzzle Design Lessons From The World’s Greatest Puzzle Communities

Puzzles are a crucial gameplay element across many genres, whether players are solving a riddle, reflecting a laser, or just trying to find the boss's weak point. But most of the world's greatest puzzle creators don't work in the video game industry. Their brilliant construction techniques are not widely known beyond a handful of insular puzzlemaking communities (many of whom developed their own best practices long before the digital age.) Elyot has spent years participating in these puzzle communities, learning their aesthetic sensibilities, and documenting their vocabulary. He discovered a mountain of innovative design methods, useful practices, and names of things he always wanted a name for—all with profound applicability to the creation of video game puzzles. This talk aims to spread this arcane knowledge to the broader gaming industry. Examples will be taken from video games in multiple genres, but also escape rooms, puzzlehunts, crosswords, logic puzzles, chess compositions, physical puzzles, etc..