2026-06-20 · design-roundup
Puzzles Made to Show Off a System, Not to Stump You — Patrick Traynor on System-Centric Design in Patrick's Parabox (GDC 2024)
One article today: the official slides from Patrick Traynor's GDC 2024 talk, "System-Centric Puzzle Design in Patrick's Parabox." His premise is inverted: "the purpose of the system is not to make cool puzzles. The purpose of the puzzles is to showcase this cool system." So difficulty is tuned to communicate, not to challenge — puzzles simplified as much as possible while still conveying their idea. He covers smoothing the learning curve (insert, modify, delete, reorder, optionalize), ~15 full-game playtests recorded with narration, an idea-finding method of "find an interaction and force it," and a heuristic for a good puzzle system: how many puzzles you can make in it. 364 shipped puzzles, 600+ unused drafts. A 2024 talk, but worth reading now for how it reframes a core design assumption.