Planning Puzzles

As is often the case, my concept and the final results are not the same. While I knew that I wanted some type of holographic graphic puzzle, my first thoughts were that the chunks of the image would change their image based on where they were placed. While on the surface this sounds like a really neat puzzle, it is also confusing. More important, at least from a game design perspective, is the fact that the final position of each piece is non-obvious as the only way to know that the piece is in the correct location is to place it in the correct position. The net result of this is that the game turns into nothing more than a trial and error challenge.

Once I realized this, the need to alter the design became obvious. I needed some way of emphasising the fact that a hologram is multiple images combined together so the need for more than one image was imperative. If each piece had multiple images that had to be selected, then that would cover my needs. How to select the image for each piece then became the concern. If I had faces of a cube representing the image, then each piece of the puzzle could be a cube with each face of the cube having a different image. The puzzle would then be a double puzzle. The player would not only need to figure out which side of the cube should be showing, but where that cube should be placed. Having the faces all be images from different locations of the puzzle made this a proper challenge.

The development then became having six images broken into pieces and placed on cubes. The key here is that while the images had to be similar to each other to increase the challenge of the puzzle, they also had to be unique enough that there were no identical pieces. After all, I did not want the situation where the player had an image that looked like the correct image but was not correct because one of the pieces was using a piece that was identical in looks but belonged to a different puzzle.

One other cheat that ended up being implemented with this game was the orientation of the pieces. While having the player have to properly orientate the images on the cube would have been even more challenging, it would have also added to the complexity of the coding. Since my limited development time applied as always, having the picture segments on the cube always orient themselves properly was added to the game. Sometimes player conveniences are really there for the programmers.