Dungeon chest puzzles

[tukkek]

Some of the chests in dungeons could require a puzzle to be solved. There are lots of 2D puzzles that can easily be generated by just creating a grid with the win-scenario and just scramble them. The scramble can be repeated between 1-4 times depending on the Dungeon Tier to produce higher difficulty puzzles through the same mechanism.

Although puzzles are generally not overwhelmingly well-received on roguelikes, Javelin does need more "context switches" to not overwhelm the player with battle after battle on longer play sessions, which gets tiring quickly. Dungeon already do that to an extent but puzzles would help further.

The puzzle ratio could be fairly low, with 1 in 4-10 (DungeonTable) chest having a random puzzle to solve. Instead, they could be an entirely separate feature on their own, so players won't feel "cheated" if they just feel like skipping a PuzzleChest instead. Another idea would be PuzzleDungeons, which players can tackle at their own pace or ignore completely, where every feature is a PuzzleChest and combat is disabled. In any way, PuzzleChests being "bonus treasures" might be enough for players to simply choose to ignore them if they don't like the gameplay.

[tukkek]

Although there are several games for inspiration here and some effort has been put as a first triage, not all of them are probably aligned with the concept above of using a single "scramble this solution x times" approach to generation. Another limitation is that, as much as possible, puzzles should be solvable using the keyboard or the mouse without a big detriment either way.

Steam (some from laiz) 96% https://store.steampowered.com/app/699600/PEG/ 95% https://store.steampowered.com/app/476240/KNIGHTS/ 95% https://store.steampowered.com/app/397400/HueBots/ 92% https://store.steampowered.com/app/321480/Sigils_of_Elohim/ 91% https://store.steampowered.com/app/476460/Picross_Touch/ 90% https://store.steampowered.com/app/725340/Lines_X_Free/ 85% https://store.steampowered.com/app/863400/Feud/ 73% https://store.steampowered.com/app/533690/Think_To_Die/ 72% https://store.steampowered.com/app/874400/Dinosaur_Hunt_Puzzle/

Some from KDE

https://games.kde.org/game.php?game=kdiamond https://kde.org/applications/games/org.kde.katomic https://kde.org/applications/games/org.kde.kblackbox

From the Arch wiki https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/

From Ubuntu wiki http://www.frozen-bubble.org/

From OS Game Clones http://bni.github.io/orbium/

There's probably more than anyone can handle in the Play Store as well.

[tukkek]

The Way's puzzles are amazing and some of them fit the requirements. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=916340426

The Witness (steam) comes recommended by laiz, in particular the IGN guide https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-witness/

[tukkek]

sokobond and "baba is you" (also from laiz) are additions to the base sokoban formula

[10:01 PM] Iaiz: sokobond - sokoban but pieces can bond together [10:02 PM] Iaiz: baba is you - sokoban but the rules are physical objects just like crates (or in this case whatever object you feel like)

Slitherlink http://gopuzzles.appspot.com/, https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/

http://www.kaser.com/crocotile.html http://www.kaser.com/ft.html http://www.kaser.com/kmazes.html http://www.kaser.com/ww.html http://www.kaser.com/ff.html

[tukkek]

Simple "find the right order" on a number of elements also works (maybe 4*tier)? Correct elements are inlaind as the sequence is selected and it resets upon an error.

[tukkek]

Puzzle idea: on a grid "board", have different color squares for the squares pieces are supposed to end on. Pieces can only move on the horizontal-vertical or diagonal-axis (different puzzle types, potentially). Having obstacles or more pieces that would naturally block themselves are way to create higher difficulties.

[tukkek]

Path of Exile has a couple interesting logic puzzles in the Laboratory https://www.poelab.com/gauntlets-puzzles

[tukkek]

Might be possible to simulate a Tower of Hanoi game by using a gradient of colors and columns in a grid - although it fits the model perfectly, the user experience may be awkward.

[tukkek]

There are a few concepts that can work with a simple "full board except one free square which is used to move pieces to" concept. A couple examples are: having to return the pieces to their intended positions (let's say rows or columns by border/background color); or simply arranging the pieces so that all pieces of each color are touching each other.

This does bring up the question of how are the goals going to be delivered to the player, intuitively: the ideal solution would be to have the "correct" answer delineated (again background or border colors) and let the player figure out by themselves the possible moves (which should be highlighted with each piece clicked). This would allow puzzles to be a 100% deducible without needing to convey instructions and goals in any other way but it would also preclude many concepts from being actually implemented.

[tukkek]

Have a grid with obstacles with two balls that need to reach a certain destination (marked with colored borders for each). The gimmick is that with every move you make (4 axis) the other ball will also move in the same direction. Each move goes as far as possible (no partial moves).

Difficulty can increase the number of balls, the grid size and the amount of obstacles.

[tukkek]

A puzzle where each square of the grid (from center out) have randomly-placed lenses and the objective is to "rotate" each square so that a ray from the center reaches a desired position (in the outward layer or any one)?

This is probably hard to represent - the lenses are fine, with different colors for each layer but the ray would break the mold of the proposed view architecture - but maybe could be easily extended at some point...?

[tukkek]

The classic "rotate the pipes until you have a full path from start to finish" is also a good idea that breaks the mold - something similar could be created with having to create a clear path from point A to point B using only blocks of the same color (having the path marked on the map could help with visual delivery of the objective, even if that changes the puzzle itself).

[tukkek]

A puzzle where only valid movements is swapping pieces' positions (probably only adjacent on 4 axis). The objective is informed through colored borders.

[tukkek]

A puzzle where the objective is to make a few spots on the grid empty (marked by white borders) while sliding pieces away in 2 axis. Probably too simple though and difficulty wouldn't really scale (except by sheer number of moves necessary to solve). Maybe if there are more colors than just, say black and white and the colors interact in a way to complicate things it could be a good idea.

Maybe having a single colored piece per color that needs to go to a particular square (marked by border color) would be enough to make this work. In that case difficulty could be scaled by grid size, number of colors (1 square each), number of empty positions (white) and perhaps even static obstacles (gray). Might need to try it out to see if it works or not.