Learn Puzzle Design

第1部

Introduction — Play and Puzzles

Before designing a puzzle, we check what 'play' is and where 'puzzle' sits inside it. The vocabulary here underpins every later chapter.

1. 第1章What Is Play?Huizinga's magic circle, Caillois's four categories, Wittgenstein's language games. We begin by naming what we are making with tools left by philosophers a century ago.8篇 →
2. 第2章Words for Talking About PuzzlesMDA, lenses, verbs, mechanics. We trace where the shared vocabulary of designers came from, and place this site's Mechanics Lexicon as its continuation.6篇 →

第2部

Lineage — Where Puzzles Came From

Most mechanics that feel new have a predecessor. Paper and wood, pencil, Flash, game jams — we follow what was invented and what was inherited, era by era.

1. 第3章Puzzles of Paper and WoodFrom the 15 Puzzle to Rubik's Cube. Pre-digital objects had already invented today's verbs: arrange, rotate, fit, transfer.11篇 →
2. 第4章Pencil Puzzles and NikoliHow Sudoku travelled the world, and the magazine its readers built. Pencil puzzles handed digital logic games the norms of guess-free logic and the unique solution.12篇 →
3. 第5章Origins of the Digital PuzzleSokoban, Tetris, Boulder Dash, Lemmings. A handful of 1980s games fixed the grammar of pushing, falling and indirect control — the strata beneath everything made forty years later.13篇 →
4. 第6章The 2000s Turn — Flash, Mobile, JamsToday's thinky scene grew out of browser corners and game jams. We trace, with examples, how something built in 48 hours becomes a classic a decade later.15篇 →

第3部

Verbs — The Grammar of Mechanics

Puzzles are made of verbs — push, roll, flip, rewind, nest. For each mechanic we take apart what choosing one verb decides, and what it leaves open.

1. 第7章Push, Roll, FallStarting from the 'you cannot pull' that Sokoban invented, through rolling, gravity flips and track laying — the lineage of verbs that move things on a board, and the constraints each one imposes.7篇 →
2. 第8章Perspective, Time, ClonesWhen what you move is not an object but your viewpoint, the clock, or yourself, what does the puzzle start to demand? Impossible figures, rewinding, time loops, self-cooperation, light and shadow.7篇 →
3. 第9章Playing With the Rules ThemselvesMeta-puzzles, subtractive design, one-screen levels, programming. Building depth without adding rules — or by making the rules themselves move. Baba Is You and Stephen's Sausage Roll bracket the chapter.8篇 →

第4部

Difficulty — Designing the Learning Curve and Failure

'Hard' is not a single quantity. Teaching order, how hints appear, whether Undo exists, how dead ends are shown, and the yardsticks for measuring difficulty — we turn each knob a designer actually holds.

1. 第10章Learning Curves and Teaching OrderIntroduce, deepen, integrate. The order of levels is a textbook's chapter order — the sequence itself teaches. Baba's vertical wall and the measurable effect of Mario 1-1.8篇 →
2. 第11章Hints, Undo, Dead EndsHow failure is handled defines a game's character. How to show and hide hints, whether to permit or punish trial, how to make dead ends legible, where the overworld lets a stuck player go.10篇 →
3. 第12章Measuring DifficultyCount of numbers used, solving-loop count, human time-to-solve, AI learning speed. Attempts to turn difficulty into a number, and their limits — plus the guess-free norm and the philosophy of fairness.10篇 →

第5部

Observation — Deduction and Story

Some puzzles have nothing to move. Looking, reading, remembering, writing down. The grammar shared by The Witness, Obra Dinn and Lorelei, and what is gained and lost when story enters the puzzle.

1. 第13章Making Observation PlayDesigning puzzles that advance with the head alone. Where the deduction's memory lives (the in-game notebook), the border between walking and deducing, decipherment, solving by ear.9篇 →
2. 第14章Story and PuzzleWhat separates puzzles with a story from those without? When a riddle expresses a specific idea, when two people solve together, when the world itself becomes the mystery.9篇 →

第6部

Generation — Levels by Hand, Levels by Machine

Build levels by hand, or have a machine generate them? Generation must deliver not just 'solvable' but 'interesting', and the two part ways in different places. Solvers, verifiers, evolutionary search, LLMs.

1. 第15章Generating LevelsHand-built versus procedural, how to ideate levels, how to make 'solvable randomness'. WFC with reinforcement learning, and genetic algorithms steering toward 'just right' difficulty.10篇 →
2. 第16章Generating Rules, Measuring With SolversGenerate rules, not levels. Writing pencil-puzzle rules as equations, having machines solve 500 PuzzleScript games, letting AI invent new Minesweeper rules. The verifier becomes the curriculum.10篇 →

第7部

Sound — Music That Supports Thinking

Puzzle music is a peculiar genre: it must never become wallpaper however long it plays. Writing no music, letting the stamp take over, assembling as you solve — sound as design.

1. 第17章Sound That Never Becomes WallpaperEight contrasting solutions. COCOON's sustain, The Witness's silence, Outer Wilds's music as tool, Papers, Please's start-of-day cue, FRACT's music that grows as you solve, Baba's loop that never scolds.10篇 →

第8部

Designers — The Philosophies Behind the Work

Read the people, not the works. Designers use the same words — difficulty, subtraction, discovery — to mean different things. Two chapters for laying those differences side by side.

1. 第18章Those Who Doubt the RulesDoubting convention down to its reasons, making non-explanation the work, insisting it is discovery rather than invention. Designers who stand on the side of the rules.9篇 →
2. 第19章Those of Subtraction and TouchThe mechanism of adding no mechanism, years of depth packed into one swipe, making the answer belong to the solver. Designers who stand on the side of the player.11篇 →

第9部

Shipping — Make It, Then Deliver It

The work does not end when the design does. The market map, jams and grants, the daily format as distribution channel, and how to read the negative reviews that arrive after release.

1. 第20章Market and DeliveryThe Steam puzzle market as seen from 130 reviews, the New Voices grant, the Thinky Puzzle Game Jam, the ecosystem of free daily puzzles — including the stance of starting only after deciding it won't sell.11篇 →
2. 第21章Rereading the Negative ReviewsThe negative Steam reviews of acclaimed games mix real design flaws with voices from outside the intended audience. Five counter-reviews as practice in telling them apart.7篇 →

参考伴侣

课程用于按顺序阅读，词典用于查阅。推箱子类、规则改写、推理、路径——章节中出现的机制都可以在词典中查到定义、谱系与设计陷阱。