tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866819352076808573.post8474228125881757193..comments2019-10-07T20:32:10.850-07:00Comments on Metafilter Mario Maker: The Four Doors PuzzleRodneyliveshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03476187929555342435noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866819352076808573.post-23417564296140087892015-11-05T13:39:44.540-08:002015-11-05T13:39:44.540-08:00Excellent, cheers.Excellent, cheers.dnghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11336918262758156545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866819352076808573.post-39737223825747728932015-11-01T00:38:31.737-07:002015-11-01T00:38:31.737-07:00(Of course when I say "naturalness," I m...(Of course when I say "naturalness," I mean in the sense of "a natural sequence of diagonally-placed blocks." Hey, it's how my brain works.)Rodneyliveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03476187929555342435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7866819352076808573.post-53122944852837797462015-11-01T00:34:03.730-07:002015-11-01T00:34:03.730-07:00What I like about this course, something that I th...What I like about this course, something that I think is common of a lot of great levels in many games, is the naturalness of it. The sense that it exists as something apart of a game that has rules, and objectives, and a necessity of being completeable.<br /><br />The artificiality of games wears down on my sometimes, the sense of being created for a purpose. You can create an interesting task for the player to finish, sure. If you're blatant enough about it the player can look at it, think /game puzzle/, and even immediately set about doing what it requires. In a level like this, the very existence of an element is proof of its necessity in solving the puzzle. Like how you can figure out the crook in an episode of Scooby-Doo by finding the extraneous character, the one who has no other purpose in the story other than to show up at least once so it can be "fair" when the gang unmasks him at the end.<br /><br />What a better level may have, what this one certainly does, is an /obfuscating pattern/, some aspect of the course that has a life apart from being a mechanical puzzle to be solved, both to add verisimilitude to the level, and to mask the presence of necessary puzzle elements so the player doesn't see them and think something like /ho, so I'll need a Koopa shell this time/.Rodneyliveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03476187929555342435noreply@blogger.com