hello i like to make video games and stuff and also have a good time on the computer. look @ my pinned for some of the video games and things. sometimes i am horny on @squishfox
something i keep doing in fox flux is very much avoiding "ramp up" puzzles because they feel like filler to me? like this isn't a sokoban, you don't need to develop an eye for particular grid arrangements and thus need a new puzzle for every single one. this is a moving platform, we all know what a moving platform is, it is a platform that moves, let's move on
i just hope this doesn't make the difficulty curve too high or make me run out of good puzzles too fast
I feel like it can still help cuz each game does feel a little different so even if u'fe played 100 games wiff moving platforms, the muscle memory still doesn't necessarily transfer.
Altho as someone who is always terrible teh first time they play any game, the thing I like about them the most isn't really the smoother learning curve buf the flavor that can be added, which is taking advantage of the fact you don't need to be paying as much attention to the puzzle itself, hehe. Like, u following a character and/or they teaching u about it (altho I prefer when it's lighter on the dialog and more visual, but that's me)
In general I think it's not Necessary (specifically, if the actual puzzles are designed well enuff and are fun enuff to engage with, then players will catch up quickly in my experience) but it can be an opportunity to do cool stuff specific to it. Alfo it's always an option to make a separate, optional training area/level, hehe.
I'm trying to take the same "no filler" approach for my game and I'm worried that it won't work for normal players. I think you've got the right idea though, like for puzzles in particular I think repetition can grow tiresome very fast
I relate but find that a couple very plain puzzles with a new mechanic and not much else are worthwhile to have. imo the public demo did this well
i guess i'm on the right track then! i thought of that stuff as playing around, not... making you do three micro variants of the same thing
no idea if i'm representative (typically not) but every time i'm doing a game that introduces a mechanic and then the very next screen it's doing something totally unhinged i make the sickos face
every AAA game is someone's first game that came with their first ever ninstationbox so they all need a tutorial on how to play it that assumes you have never played a video game before. and that applies to common things like gentle introductions to common puzzles and common game objects like moving platforms too. they have to be built for people that cannot "read video games"
i do not believe your indie video game, or anyone's indie video game really, will be anyone's first video game with a puzzle or a platform in it. so you just... don't have to do that if you don't wanna
i think the more important thing is that the first introduction to a common element is low-risk, so people can get used to how they work with the physics in your game. it would be nice if the first moving platform was not over an instant death spike pit, but it doesn't need to be 1 moving platform then 2 moving platforms then 3 then 4 etc etc
ramp up puzzles can be helpful to give some space for experimentation
that said they are not necessary: stephen's sausage roll has absolutely none of them iirc
ultimately it's up to you; i do agree that it's easier to make ramp up puzzles that are boring, so you have to put a bit more work on them, but both approaches are fine
oh i definitely like to give you puzzles where you can play with a thing. i just don't want to break mechanics down... microscopically
i think maybe i'm giving the wrong impression here? and maybe it's because most indie puzzlers are ultimately based in a grid, and a big part of them is navigating the grid, and there are a great many discrete individual puzzles that are each in their own grid, and the grid is the whole thing, and understanding how to solve the puzzles is an extremely incremental process...
but fox flux is a platformer, where there are necessarily always multiple things going on (even jumping is relatively complicated, compared to a grid), and where there are multiple puzzles woven together in a larger level. so even a single instance of a mechanic already gives you a lot of ways to play with it and see how it works. like, the first time i give you a box, you can already try dropping it in a bunch of different places — places that are part of a puzzle, and places that aren't. baba level 1 is big but it's still ultimately about exactly one thing. and actually one of my minor gripes with baba's endgame is that there really aren't a lot of places where you can easily experiment with advanced mechanics, because they get introduced in very compact puzzles that force you to do them and only work in one way
so a big part of why i don't feel the need to do a lot of explicit ramping is probably that the player can do it themselves anyway. if i give you a single moving platform then it's not like you can do 1 thing with it and Puzzle Solved; you can ride it forwards, backwards, jump onto it from below, jump off it onto something above, etc. i don't need to give you a whole separate puzzle for each of those things because they are all obvious ways to mess with a platform anyway and they will all naturally come up on their own without needing to be framed as a tutorial puzzle
