PROBLEM-FIRST GAME DESIGN
MAY 30TH - RONAN JENNINGS
Problem-First Game Design
Disclaimer 1: The movie ‘Companion’ is very good. In this article I'm going to give examples of how a couple different scenes play out, but I'm going to give zero context for the plot and story of the film. I recommend watching it knowing as little as possible.
Disclaimer 2: I’m going to do a lot of talking about how “Classic Escape Rooms” do things, I’m making some sweeping generalisations for the sake of making a point. No disrespect to any games out there. I’ve never played an escape room that I haven’t had fun with.
There's a scene in the 2024 movie Companion where Jack Quaid’s character has lost his phone, but desperately needs to make a call.
He steals another character’s phone, but it's locked. Damn. There's no way he knows the code. Except Jack Quaid -and the audience- remembers that earlier in the film it was established that the other character uses the same code for everything: Stalin's Birthday.
But without use of his phone, how is he supposed to know when- Wait! There's a library, containing books on Russian history.
Find a book on Stalin, find his birthday, unlock the phone, make the call. Done.
A little later, another character is trying to start a car. Again, this is a tense situation. They’re in danger and desperately need the car to get moving NOW. But the car is voice controlled, and isn't programmed to their voice. Disaster.
…except that there's technology in this film that lets people alter their voice. Quick, bring up those controls, and cue a scene where they adjust three different sliders to control the pitch, tone, and warmth of their voice to replicate someone else, all under intense time pressure. Match the voice, start the car, make the escape.
It’s good stuff. The film’s full of moments like this.
This is what I call Problem-First game design. And it’s essentially just how the real world works: You’re presented with a problem, and then have to figure out how to use the tools at your disposal to solve it.
Jack Quaid didn’t hear about Stalin’s birthday earlier in the film, and then go out of his way to learn the date, breaking into the other character’s phone just to see what he could find. The characters didn’t change their voices just for the hell of it and then see what they could apply that to.
So how come that’s how we’ve been trained to play escape rooms?
So often, these games rely on what I’m calling Solution-First game design. Where you discover a solution, and then have to figure out the problem that it solves. How often in escape rooms have you pressed a button, lined up the colours, or entered the code, and then said “Right. So what did that actually do?”
When compared to those scenes in Companion, or just to real life, it suddenly seems strange. Why were you playing with those buttons? What were you actually trying to achieve? And the answer’s probably something along the lines of “Because they were there. And this is an escape room.”
All too often you need to find the puzzle before you start working on it, all too often you complete the puzzle without even knowing why you’re doing it. You’re just completing the thing that’s in front of you because that’s how games work.
This has been on my mind lately because I’ve recently had a strange uptick in players finishing our games and then holding up some prop or another, asking me “So what was this for?” or “What was I supposed to do with this?”.
And honestly, the first few times I didn’t have a good answer. Oh god. A prop that isn’t directly part of a puzzle. Is this a dreaded red herring!? I’ve been called out! The shame! How has this never occurred to me before! Well, because that’s just kind of fundamentally not how our games work. There’s basically no point in any of our games where we tell the players to just figure out what they’re supposed to do. You’re always given very clear instructions of what your current objective for this part of the game is.
An example:
OBJECTIVE: WHERE WAS SUSPECT 3 AT THE TIME OF THE MURDER?
We’re in the middle of a murder case, and you’ve just launched an investigation into a new suspect. You’ve been given access to their personal items, where you’ve found part of a printed email discussing plans for the night of the murder, and a hint to their computer password.
The objective has been made clear, a problem has been presented, and it’s up to the players to find the solution. To make things more interesting, the problem will have a few different layers with different solutions, but always working towards the same goal.
Problem: We need to find out the location of Suspect 3.
Solution: Hack into their emails.
Which leads to:
Problem: Their emails are password protected.
Solution: Use the hint, and what you know about the character’s personal tastes to figure out the password.
Which leads to:
Problem: There isn’t enough useful information available, because an email chain was left unfinished. Another character is waiting for a reply.
Solution: Impersonate Suspect 3, continue the email chain and ask for more information.
Which leads to:
Problem: Suspect 3 has a distinct style of speech, and you’re going to be caught out unless you…
Solution: Copy their tone, and type an email with their voice and vernacular.
Success. You’re able to finish the conversation, and lead the other character to fill in the details of where Suspect 3 was at the time of the murder, just as you hoped they would.
That’s a puzzle on one of our games, and now that I type it out, it’s actually very similar to the examples from Companion. Assuming we’ve done our job right, there’s no point in this where a player is left wondering what they’re supposed to be doing, or what goal they’re working towards. From the moment you start investigating Suspect 3, it’s made clear that your objective is to establish their whereabouts, and that this other character in the emails has relevant information. Everything from here is about pursuing this one lead to achieve this one goal.
Sure, there’s things to explore, and discoveries to be made, and you might be working on a couple different leads like this at once, but I like to think we’re very clear about what the mission is. Except, every now and again, a player will start asking why certain props exist, or why the wall decorations are different colours, and try to figure out what they’re supposed to do with this.
There’s a disconnect there. In a classic escape room, noticing that the decorations are different colours is perhaps an indication to play with them, rearrange them, or press corresponding coloured buttons. But in context, what could the colours of the decor possibly have to do with Suspect 3’s location? How would this help you achieve your current goal? What do you think will happen when the decorations are arranged in rainbow order? You’ve gone looking for a puzzle, trying to create a Solution to a Problem that doesn’t exist.
The truth is simply that the wall decorations are different colours because it looked nicer that way. We do try to make every item serve some sort of purpose, whether it it’s directly useful for problem solving, tells you something about the characters, or it just makes sense as an item to exist in this world, but it doesn’t always have a direct one-to-one mechanical function to further your progress in the game. Sure, if the rest of the game was full of classic puzzles, this might be considered confusing and distracting to the point of being bad design. But in this game it’s always, at every point, clear what the objective is, clear what you’re working towards, and (hopefully) clear how to go about achieving this.
To be clear, I’m not trying to trash talk players who ask these questions. Either we haven’t done a good enough job at explaining and tutorialising how the game works (a separate discussion, stay tuned), or this idea of Find Puzzle Solve Puzzle Find Next Puzzle is so deeply ingrained that’s it’s hard to shake people from how they assume the game operates, even when it’s clearly not working that way. Maybe I’m talking from a biased perspective, and it’s actually not clear in our games what you’re supposed to be doing. Maybe our signposting needs to be better, maybe we should be more aware of the landscape we’re working in and avoid anything that might look like a classic puzzle. Not because the players are dumb, but because that’s the reality of working within a format of established tropes and trends.
As the industry changes, design philosophies change, and new game mechanics are invented, teaching players how to approach your game will be a fascinating challenge to tackle. But that’s a discussion for another time.
Solution-First game design, the classic way of doing puzzles for the sake of doing puzzles, feels very old-school Point and Click Adventure Game. Put CANDLESTICK on CAT. Hit CAT with SOAP. Sure there might have been signposting hinting that you were supposed to do that, but do you really understand in the context of the narrative why the soapy cat stick helps you proceed? Or is it just the arbitrary item that triggers the next scene?
It’s more interesting to find a lock and know you need a code, than it is to find a code and start hunting for a lock.
Present me with a problem. Let me work towards a solution.
Go watch Companion.
