ThinkyCon 2024

Kick-off

Playful Problem Solving - What Puzzle Game Research Teaches Us About Player Problem Solving

Dr. Craig G Anderson & Dr. David DeLiema

In this talk, researchers Drs. Craig G Anderson and David DeLiema will present the work they have been doing to understand how puzzle games have been designed to challenge players to solve problems in a playful environment, giving the audience a glimpse of how games research works and what it can tell us.

How We Make New Games at The New York Times

Jeff Petriello

The New York Times has come a long way since the Crossword. Our commitment to being the premiere destination for digital puzzles means we constantly are developing new ideas. This talk will shed some light onto that process - from game jam to the public - and the people that are a part of it.

Editor tooling for A Monster's Expedition

Alan Hazelden

The world of A Monster's Expedition contains hundreds of islands, all created and placed by hand. Due to the open world gameplay, areas would often require dozens of iterations to make everything fit together without issues; without good tools, this would not have been possible.

Alan Hazelden will give insight into the development process by showing the editor tools used to make the game. He'll discuss what worked well, what could have been better, and identify quality of life features that you might find useful for your own games.

Break

Bingo! The thrill of solving puzzle game localization challenges

Diana Díaz Montón

The challenges of video game localization take on a new dimension when working with puzzle video games. In this talk, we will review some of these challenges and discuss strategies for cracking the code.

Emotional Environmental Puzzle Design

Tori Smith

When creating “No Worries: The Uncozy Escape Room Experience”, one of the design challenges was how to emphasize narrative emotional impact through puzzle solving. While escape rooms often advertise high production value through lighting, set design, props, etc. asking the players to commit to roleplaying a character within this staged play space is a newer crossroads between escape rooms and LARP.

In “No Worries”, the player is distinctly told that the objective is not to escape, therefore solving puzzles is not a stressed priority. They are asked to clean and explore the space while virtually communicating with NPCs. While they perform these actions, they may discover puzzle elements that ultimately unlock a box.

But these elements and their placement tell their own story: the content of the books placed on the bookshelf just so, the pictures the player character has chosen to frame and where they hang them on the wall, the items that may or not make their way to the trash bin. The activity of decluttering has distinct effects on the emotional tone from start to finish, creating an emotional escape room instead of a physical one.

Rewinding - moving time backwards in planning-based games

Chris Knowles

Areas covered: - How Hexahedra’s code structure makes rewinding feasible. - Tracking game state over time, and restoring it. - Tracking and restoring UI state. - Playing short chunks of gameplay backwards. - Rewinding particles in Unity.

Break

Thinking Vibes in Thinky Games

Murray Somerwolff

Talking from his experience as an art director in indie games, Murray Somerwolff pitches his idea as to why he thinks that "thinking about the vibes" is a crucial part of game dev, one that better helps to express our games both visually and mechanically.

How to break out of the Puzzle Niche

Lenophie

Lots of young indie game devs daydream about making puzzle games despite it being one of the least popular genre among gamers. Let's make that puzzle game actually profitable!

This talk covers ways to turn your puzzle game into a gem and reach audiences outside the puzzle niche from a joint design and marketing perspective: From improving the game's overall presentation to correctly teasing its most hidden (and exciting!) mechanics, this talk also tackles ways to facilitate content creators' job of showcasing your puzzle game, a genre most usually avoid.

This talk will delve into examples from Pâquerette Down the Bunburrows as well as tricks used by other successful puzzle games such Baba is You, The Witness or Viewfinder.

Playtesting for better puzzles - measuring challenge

Dr Meg Pusey

Playtesting is key to making better games and better puzzles. But how can we use playtesting to measure the challenge level of puzzles? How do you know they're at the 'right' level.

Join us for a chat about playtesting puzzles, metrics for all types of puzzles and how you can use this for designing your puzzle games.