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Silly reasons to not make a puzzle game

  • Speaker: Cerise Talis

This talk describes various silly reasons to abandon a puzzle game idea.

Many a puzzle is scrapped for lack of structure by which to become a game. These "systems that could never be games" map poorly onto thinky (and in particular, sokoban) expectations. By dissecting our baggage as game designers and players, we can approach a richer understanding of what games are possible to make.

Topics of discussion include: wordless games and the necessity of word-ful puzzle games, undo stack management, solution extractions, and the "no musical bird" problem.

This talk was presented at ThinkyCon 2025, a developer conference about all aspects of the creation of thinky games.

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Discover the rules from only an image of a puzzle game environment.

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