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Towers of Pen: puzzle experiences that zoom out and out

• Speaker: Andrew Plotkin

What does it mean to take a puzzle to the next level? In Hadean Lands (parser IF, 2014) I designed a game where every solved puzzle "collapses" to become a single move in a larger puzzle. And larger still, and so on... Other games have taken a similar tack, notably Baba Is You.

What does it mean for a game to "scale up" in this way? Is it different from the familiar concept of the metapuzzle? (Spoiler: yes.) What kinds of puzzles are amenable to this scaling idea? And why is it so awesome, anyway?

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

Alastair Aitchison, Playful Technology

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Silly reasons to not make a puzzle game

Cerise Talis