Making puzzles in RPGs

[Nagasaki]

We all know for once that almost every RPG in existence has an area where you must use brains over brawn. And we don't want the player of our game be like monsters: doing nothing but battling. Hence, we make puzzles in RPGs. But there are times that we need to make variations of puzzles. I mean, you cannot just use a Boulder Maze over and over and over again. So, what puzzles do you have in mind?

(I'm asking the community to gain ideas in making a "castle of nothing but puzzles" dungeon in my game.)

Current ideas in mind:

1. Sokoban. Push all the items to its designated places to proceed.
2. Ice Floor Puzzle. Walk all tiles in an area without repeating stepping on any tile twice. If you've played the 3rd generation Pokemon games and its remakes, you've been probably remembering this in the Sootopolis City gym.
3. Alchemy-like Puzzle. Combine two items from a list to make the needed item to proceed. This puzzle that I have thought is actually inspired from the browser game, "Doodle God" and all it's variations.
 

 

[Heartbreak61]

Spoiler

how to set all of those tiles to yellow?first, you push switch c and all tiles from row c will be inverted. that will make tile 3C to white.

then, you push switch 3 and all tiles on column 3 will be inverted. now you got all tile colored yellow.

This kind of puzzle really made me scratch my head when I played "To The Moon" game.

edit: I forget that horizontal and vertical flips was easy. What really made me scratch my head was diagonal flip, rofl

 

[Matseb2611]

You could have various gate-related puzzles, such as:

1. Use no more than X number of gates to get from start to end.

2. Use as many gates as you want, but each gate can only be used once.

3. All gates flip between useable and unuseable every time you use any of them.

4. A number of paired gates or rail-tracks, where unlocking one, locks the other, and vice versa.

Another variation of ice floor puzzle is also when stepping on a tile causes your character to keep sliding until they come to an obstacle.

 

[Chrispy]

Floor Tile Puzzle - You see this in many different games, and I'd say its pretty easy as long as you are nice enough to give the players a hint or two. You're walking down a hallway, and suddenly, you come across a confusing array of tiles like this:::

        v

OXOSXON

NNOXDXO

ODNXDOC

DOXNODX

DNXF NDX

        v

Each different letter represents a different tile. S is start and F is finish, and you have to walk across the tiles in a very specific pattern, otherwise the puzzle resets and you have to go back to start. There's several ways games allow a floor puzzle like this to be solved.

1) Step on only the tiles required, the pattern doesn't matter.

       v

ZZZSZZZ

ZZZXZZZ

ZZZXDOZ

ZZZNODZ

ZZZF ZZZ

       v

Z represents the tiles you do not want to step on, you only have to activate the start, finish, and the tiles shown, and you can do it in any pattern you want.

2) Step in a specific order.

In this case, it would be Down 2, Right 2, Down 1, Left 2, Down 1.

        v

ZZZ v ZZZ

ZZZ v ZZZ

ZZZ >>v Z

ZZZ v<< Z

ZZZ v ZZZ

        v

In this case, the v and arrows represent the path you want to walk.  Alternatively, instead of directions and steps, the only hint you give the player is this "SXXDODONF", each letter representing a symbol on the ground and you have to walk on it in that order.

The only downside to a puzzle like this is that you have to create a lot of events and have them work together to make the puzzle work. This puzzle has 35 tiles, and could require as many events depending on how you do it, and many people might want to see a bigger and more interesting one.

There's a million ways to let players figure out how to solve a puzzle like this too. One of the more difficult ones for the player is that you could have one that requires you to step in a specific order. The only hint you give (if you give one at all) is "sometimes you must walk the same path twice), and the player is banging their head against the wall because you didn't give them any clue...except that in the last area, the player walked through a tight 1 tile wide path that happens to be the same size as this puzzle.

 

[KoldBlood]

I'm glad this topic was started because this is one of the aspects I've been struggling to come up with in my game. I'd like to see what ideas others have come up with.

For me the puzzle I'm most proud of from my game so far is a variation on Matseb2611's gate puzzles idea. I have a "maze-like" room in one of my dungeons with 3 different colored gates (red, blue, and green) blocking some of the paths with switches of the same color strewn throughout. When a switch is pulled, say a red one, then all of the red gates in the maze switch state (if the gate is raised it will be lowered, if lowered it will be raised). The trick to the puzzle is to use the switched throughout the maze to keep switching the state of the gates to open some paths while closing off others.

The goal is to navigate the maze using the switches to find three unique black colored switches that lower the black gates blocking the treasure chest you see at the beginning of the maze, which yields a key to progress to the next area of the dungeon.

I've made a couple of puzzles for my game so far but this one was by far the most complicated and interesting one I've made so far.

 

[whitesphere]

You could have a room which has events that slowly move towards the player.  The room has a maze.  So the player needs to navigate the maze and avoid the events.  A touch by the event is either instant Game Over or transports the party back to the start of the room and resets all of the events.

Or, the events could be boulders which each are set off by a pressure plate, like this:

O

.

.

x

Stepping on the x triggers the boulder to fall on the party.  If it's a series of narrow corridors, it makes an interesting puzzle.

The other case is sort of like Legend of Zelda's Wall Demons (the giant hands that pick you up and drop you at the start of the dungeon).

Or you could have a timed room. When the timer reaches 0, the party is instantly killed or transported to the start of the room.

Those are a few possibilities.

 

[Soryn]

You could also do a password puzzle right before the big prize at the end (provided there is one)

In all the Castle or Tower's previous puzzles, hide a piece of the password... you wouldn't even have to have it be in order... it could be an anagram that can only be figured out once the player has gotten all the previous clues.

Just an idea...

 

[jonthefox]

A game I recently played the demo of (though the demo is almost all of the whole game, at this point), did puzzles the best I've ever seen them in an rpg maker game, and maybe even the best out of any rpg I've ever played.  The game is called Northwall.  http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/18152-northwall-project-updated-112715/page-1

The guy who made the game should seriously do a puzzle-making tutorial or something.  They were truly outstanding, both in terms of technical complexity / functionality, and game aesthetics.