SERIES
Carving the Learning Curve
Difficulty isn't a number. When you make the player stop, and when you let them flow, decides what your game is selling. Baba's notorious wall, Cocoon's unbroken stream, Parabox's middle ground.
Related Essays
- Carving the Learning Curve — Baba's Vertical Wall and How It Was Built
When and how should a puzzle game stop the player? A comparison of Baba Is You's notorious vertical wall, Cocoon's unbroken flow, and the design philosophy that lives between them.
- Designing Hint Systems — How to Show, How to Hide
InvisiClues' invisible ink, the silence of The Witness, the friction of The Case of the Golden Idol, Obra Dinn's rule of three. A maker's-eye survey of hint systems as a declaration of how a game treats a stuck player.
Related Reviews
- Baba Is You
A language Sokoban where you push the rules themselves around.
meta-puzzlesokoban-like - COCOON
A world inside an orb, an orb inside that world, all the way down.
meta-puzzlenarrative-puzzleassembly - Patrick's Parabox
A textbook example of recursive Sokoban, structured as a master class in pedagogy.
sokoban-likemeta-puzzle - Stephen's Sausage Roll
Grill a sausage evenly on all six sides. The difficulty is almost a joke.
sokoban-like
