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The Rules of the Game: Modelling Puzzles as Constraint Satisfaction Problems

• Speaker: Alastair Aitchison, Playful Technology

Every game has constraints: the rules that define the play space, permit certain actions, or determine victory conditions. In many puzzle games, those constraints _are_ the game itself. This talk explores puzzles as constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs), where the creator defines a set of rules and solvers find assignments that satisfy them.

While CSPs are often demonstrated with grid-based logic puzzles such as sudoku, I’ll show how the same principles can model a much broader range of language, logic, and spatial puzzles, drawing on recent videogames including Lingo, Blue Prince, and Is This Seat Taken? I'll also demonstrate how constraint-modelling tools support puzzle creation, ensuring solvability, uniqueness, and rapid exploration of new puzzle types.

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