The Wonderland Board

Guys, as some of you may have noticed I haven't uploaded a single adventure for... that would be few years. That's because of a hub project I'm making (no details as for now, it's not ready to be properly announced yet), I'm saving any decent adventure I can make. But I'm stuck when it comes to making them. The ideas just float mid-air instead of reaching my mind.

I tried everything, but the adventure turns out to be either boring, too easy or not well composed, and by that I mean it consists of separate parts instead of being one adventure. Do you have any methods to make a decent puzzle?

Designing a really good puzzle is always a challenge. Ideally, you want to make something fun, pleasantly challenging, unique, and visually pleasing all at the same time. In practice, this is nearly impossible, but here are my best methods:

My favorite puzzle design is this: Build a seemingly easy puzzle. You can solve it an easy way, which gives you a spare object, or you can solve it a harder way, which gives you a different spare object. After this puzzle, follow it with another puzzle which can only be solved if you have a specific object from the first puzzle.

You should build the first puzzle around a specific trick or gimmick. For example, on of my recent puzzles utilizes the fact that you can cast two spellballs on the same tile at the same time using a floing bubble. Another puzzle needs you to freeze an NPC for a spikeyball to bounce off of. These are ideas nobody would initially consider, which makes it relatively easy to build a challenging puzzle around them. Just be careful not to make the trick too obscure, or you might annoy your players.

If I don't want to build a large, multi-element puzzle, there's no reason not to go back to basics. A simple moobot puzzle (move them in a specific order to get one onto a button) can still be fun and challenging if its well-designed.

Or, if you want your puzzle to appear really complex, just use as many puzzle elements as possible.. Place your goal and block it with an obstacle. To get past this obstacle, you'll need to push a button/charge your magic/destroy an object or whatever. However, to do this, you'll need to get past a different obstacle. Repeat this process with a bunch of different obstacles. This "fetch-quest" style puzzle might sound tedious, but if you make every single obstacle require a different solution to bypass, you make the puzzle fun to untangle without being annoying.

Those are my ideas. Give 'em a go and see what they do for you.

My trick is to do whatever comes to your mind and put it in the editor. It seems to work most of the time.

Visuals have never been a problem, I can make a good looking adventure. The best designs however are reserved for the hub, as well as good adventures, but with them I have a huge problem.

What do you think of a general-idea-based approach? Lately I was planning the levels for one of my hub areas and I though it would be nice to have a FlipBridge + Crab + Stinker Rescue level, Floing + Water Chomper + Get all Gems one, Blink + DragonTurtle + Conveyor adventure etc. Is it helpful or limiting for you?

Considering that I haven't made anything for either RTW or WA in waaaaay too long (university, lack of time, yadda yadda) and when I do make something, it tends to be excessively difficult, I shouldn't be the one talking about this, but if my history of RTW designs is good enough for this...

... try to think of all kinds of weird things you can do. Try to think of object interactions that are known, but rarely used, or situations that mislead the player somehow. Make the solution dependent on something unusual. Then disguise the solution.

A few examples of potential "unusual"s here:
1. Turtles can temporarily block scritters, allowing you to (for example) run through a gate before the scritter walks off the button. If the turtle is somewhere on the other half of the level, this won't be too obvious.
2. Scritters cannot pass through coins/gems/keys, but you can. I think I already used this one, but good tricks can be used more than once. I didn't put real misdirection into that level, but I think with misdirection this can make a puzzle look totally impossible.
3. Grow+Ice=Growsicle. Growsicle+Spellball=Doing Something Offscreen. (careful: don't abuse weird angles here, otherwise this will prove frustrating)
4. Flashing coins/gems/keys and reflashing them can be an unobvious way to protect yourself from enemies. Careful usage of this can make tricky puzzles.
5. Try to design a magic puzzle (brr, for example) that has a simple, logical, obvious solution in 9 charges... but can be solved in 8 with an extreme amount of work and tricksiness. Then use the remaining brr charge in the other half of the level in some way that won't be too obvious.
6. ... more to come? Use these as a trampoline for your own tricks and ideas. Just think about random combinations of objects, most of them will be useless, but some can (and will) give you ideas that you've never imagined before. Go on... you can do it!

What do you think of a general-idea-based approach? Lately I was planning the levels for one of my hub areas and I though it would be nice to have a FlipBridge + Crab + Stinker Rescue level, Floing + Water Chomper + Get all Gems one, Blink + DragonTurtle + Conveyor adventure etc. Is it helpful or limiting for you?

It might work well, but if something doesn't work out, try to switch to a different general idea. This often works.

Well, when I make puzzles, I do one of three things, usually.
1. I make the exterior of the adventure first(Walls, etc.), and then build on that whatever comes to mind.(I agree with the "limit" thing, but some adventures might just be more fun to have wild guesses. )
2. I come up with an idea or "invention" to make something never seen before, and base it around that.
3. I have "inspirations" that come to mind and just happily copy/paste them into the editor.
@That last one, I think some of my best hub adventures are made from that,
though normally I don't get inspired for non-hub adventures.

Anyhow, I do wish you luck;
I look forward to playing your hub!