Puzzles In Video Games

I've noticed that, starting last gen, nearly all puzzles in games are now gone (barring puzzle games of course but even those have just become mobile games for the most part) or the "puzzle" is so simple that it would be hard to qualify it as a puzzle. Puzzles these days, if any, are either hit these bells in this order or match these symbols/colors. Even Zelda games barely have puzzles like they did in Ages/Seasons.

I do realize that some games used to have absurd puzzles to encourage players to get a strategy guide but damn do I miss a good puzzle. I might just play Lufia 2 again just to find some. This all just falls in line with the simplification of games to appeal to more people. Just as how nearly all games, besides niche genres, are all easy and can be beaten by with no thought. Sometimes with just grinding and never actually tackling what you did wrong.

When's the last time you encountered a puzzle in a game that wasn't a puzzle game?

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IT'S A GOOD THING HOLY FUCK
Fuck puzzles, they add nothing to the game but artificially prolong play time.
You wanna play as some badass apocalypse horseman murdering hordes of demons and angels alike? Here move some boxes fgt.
You wanna play as death incarnate the destroyer of worlds? Here roll some balls.
You're super badass motherfucker that made contract with otherwordly creature of great power just to save your ill child? Go move some boxes, it sure fits in the tone!
You're a professional demon hunter who doesn't give a flying fuck about building-sized demons and shit? Here have some platforms to jump around.

Fuck puzzles.
FUCK PUZZLES!!!

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That's all they've ever been.

i miss puzzle games.

Why haven't you pirated Puyo Puyo Chronicle and Puyo Puyo Tetris yet user?

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Puzzle Fighter is trash, get some fucking taste already SFfags.

chronicles is out? awesome!

Look up an app called "DanKam". It might help.

I meant they're insultingly easy. The way they go about them is just too simple to the point where you question why it was even there. They don't require you to think what so ever. I'm fine with puzzles that match X to X and Y to Y but don't make it so simple that you can solve it in 5 seconds. Maybe I've just been playing too much Sudoku recently.


More competitive puzzle games when?

Er, there's a recent puzzle game right here.
It's so fun there's even a competitive scene for it.

You don't need to know jap, the game is pretty simple to figure out if you got a translation app on your phone and the battles are obvious if you know how to play puyo puyo. Even if you don't touch the RPG side you got 17 Types of Rules for just stand alone puyo puyo


yeah it came out earlier this month

Because puzzles usually both dilute gameplay and break the immersion, especially in action games.
They might be fine in cartoony kid friendly games like Zelda or Brave Fencer Musashi, but when you put box puzzle in a metal game like Darksiders it immediately ruins the entire impression.
Wasn't the Last Guardian release a few days ago? That's a dedicated puzzle game from get go, try it.

Yeah, but it's not the same if you can't read the characters bantering with eachother.

Puzzles are gone because casuals give up instantly because most of them do not actually pay attention. People seriously need their hand held, and need a tutorial for everything. If they come up to a new puzzle they need to be told how to solve it otherwise they will quit the game there and give it a bad rating.

This is genuinely quite fun, free too.

Not wanting to be forcefully distracted from core gameplay is not casual. If you want to play a puzzle game, play a puzzle game.
If I want to play an Action game or RPG, why the hell should I solve shitty puzzles that fit in neither gameplay nor story/setting?

t. bob

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Would play this for hours with a friend. I've never even played the main story. Got a save file online and played multiplayer for ages. Ice stage was my favorite along with the normal first stage.


While I share that feeling. and bring up a good point. Why should there be a puzzle there? It can be seen as a way to take a break from all the combat but a simple cutscene or walking from one point to the other may help with that. If a person came to play a beat em up, only to have to do puzzles, it would be annoying. Like I didn't care for the motorcycle or shmup stage in Bayonetta despite it being a change in the gameplay. I just wanted to fight more.

You should, it's a pretty good story.
It's about relationships, making babies, and traps.
It also has boss fights.
One of the things i mentioned might literally be a boss trying to kill you.

I play a fair amount of older games, so I still see them fairly often. As for more recently released games I've actually played, maybe Sandshroud Ruins light puzzles in Tales of Graces f for the PS3? They start out pretty easy, but that last one has like twenty switches and if you screw things up too bad, the switches overload and automatically reset.

Anyhow, if you liked Lufia's puzzles, maybe consider looking into Wild Arms? Puzzles there range from being easy to actually taking some thought, and many of the games have permanently usable items you acquire along the way to progress through the dungeons, some of which might need to be used in conjunction. Makes the gameplay in execution feel like a turn-based JRPG with Legend of Zelda style dungeon/town exploration. Additionally, Wild Arms 3, ACF, and 5 have entire bonus puzzle minigame section of the games, involving pushing colored blocks to clear the field for rewards that can be pretty damn useful at times. It might sound a bit mundane, but some of the Millennium Puzzles/Puzzle Boxes can get rather difficult, and you have to think in advance as to how clearing the blocks in one part of the puzzle will effect the other blocks you have to work with around it (gravity being a thing, if you clear anything at the ground level, the blocks above naturally fall and shift their position).

Third time I'm trying to post this; wouldn't go through before at all for whatever reason. Trying it without linking to the OP, as I've seen speculation on other boards that that may be part of the issue.