As I begin the playtesting process for the new game, I thought I might write some notes based on what I learned while playtesting The Tale of Ord. It was my first time doing playtesting a tabletop game, so if you’re new to it too, hopefully some of this will be helpful. Finding and choosing playtesters Before you begin choosing playtesters, be sure to ask yourself who the game is for. Granted, this is a question better asked way earlier in the design process, but it’s always

Would you rather walk down a straight path, an open field, or something in between? In retrospect, I’ve preferred non-linear gameplay since before I knew what that meant. My feeling on this dates back to playing MS-DOS games (remember those?) in the 90’s, in which I would inevitably get stuck on some level of a platformer and never be able to move forward in the game, leaving me feeling frustrated and helpless. The first time I played a game that actually allowed some level o

Are ciphers even puzzles? Well, not necessarily. Okay, okay, hear me out. If you get a piece of enciphered text along with a key to decipher it, is translating that text a puzzle, or just busywork? On the other hand, if you get a piece of text and need to either skillfully decrypt it or go through some other process in order to piece together the key, that’s a different story. If you’re implementing the former, ask yourself why the text needs to be encrypted in the first plac

How do you challenge someone without making them want to bang their head against the wall? Balancing difficulty is a tricky thing, especially since ideal difficulty heavily varies depending on who the solver is. Audience There are puzzles out there that will challenge everyone that comes across them, but there are also puzzles that will take one player minutes to solve while another player might take hours. Player skill sets and their level and breadth of experience play a hu

First of all, if you’re wondering whether or not you should even provide a hint system, for the love of puzzles, yes! Do your players a favor and set it up. No one knows your game better than you do, and getting stuck and frustrated is no one’s idea of fun - especially when they’ve paid money to play your game. Now, what makes a good hint system in a mystery tabletop game? I’ll start by saying that hint systems diegetic to the narrative are definitely preferable, but often ch

These questions, of course, have many answers, and I am not the first one to ask them. I write this both to continue discussion of the topic, as well as get my own thoughts on order. First of all, what is a puzzle? A puzzle, in essence, is a problem designed to be solved by some measure of ingenuity, providing the solver with a degree of amusement. Solving a problem is at the very core of a puzzle, and the reason why people are drawn to them, but what distinguishes a puzzle f