Math Quest

I'm reminded of a Zelda-clone FDS game... OLet me think of what that series was 'Adain no Tsue'. It was essentially exactly this:

A Zelda clone, where you solve simple math equations, in order to make progress.

Now, that was meant as an 'educational' game, but you might want to look it, out of a sense of nostalgia. It is so Zelda-inspired, that it may as well use the same sprites.

As to games that include mathematical, or other logic puzzles, I'm very receptive that that. I far prefer logic puzzles, over 'try every item' puzzles.

Your only problem may be that you'll limit your audience a bit, as some people apparently play vfiseo games to turn off their brain, but in your place, I would rather make something that a few people love, because of something like this, than fret over people disliking it. The DB entry ratings for it, will certainly be skewed, which is why I argued for a ratings system broken up into categories (difficulty, puzzles, story, etc.), rather than an overall rating.

Alucard, you continue to baffle me on why you think anyone would ever want to endure some of your evil enemy and room designs. That is about as sadistic as I can imagine. Aye, it;s funny, from a questmaker perspective, to see player reactions, but anything that the player won't enjoy, or will actually hate, in my opinion, doesn't belong in a game that you want people to play.

I would want to play[/i[ a game with mathematical puzzles, and logic puzzles. I stress logic here, because those need not be math based. The dungeon 'Enigma' is a very good example. I 'got' everything in that dungeon, mentally speaking, while others BS'd it. Everything makes sense.

One of my ideas, if anyone is interested, is a dungeon with a logarithmic progression, for paths. THe correct order to go through the dungeon follws a mathematical pattern, instead of random maze paths. You don;t even need the maze function: Just shutters, that block the player from going back, and needing to follow a pattern of left, right, and up, from the beginning..
For example:

Up once, left twice, up three times, right four times, up five times, left six times; and so forth. Once the player notices the progression, they can solve the puzzle with logic. K also think that trigger-based puzzles should be logical.

There are a few odd triggers in my game, such as using bombs on dead trees; but if you think about it, a bomb [i]can destroy a dead tree. An arrow, that is on fire, can light a lamp, but a boomerang cant destroy a tree, and a candle can't destroy a rock. I see some very weird triggers in games, that essentialyly say this:

You need either (10 the lens, or (2) to try every possible item to check a trigger. When you need to use every item on a trigger that could be solved in a logcal manner, it's just bad game design.

My goal is to not require thr lens, but to allow it, or spells that replicate it, to reveal things. I will not mark all bomb spots, as an example, but I would like to make a spell that homes on secret bomb spots. Secrets are good: Irrational triggers are not good.

If you do use an irrational trigger, such as using an arrow to cause an avalanche, you should have a very good reason, such as shooting a rope net, that is holding up rocks. The player should have at least a reasonable chance to figure it out.

In a pen and paper adventure that I played, this was a scenario:

A dungeon, built as a ziggurat, had rooms with celestial motifs. You had to go through the dungeon,a nd collect crystals, with celestial symbols on them. At the top of the dungeon, there were three pillars, that could be turned, to align in different ways; and in each was an area to set one fo the gems with a celestial marker on it.

Now, as a player, I skipped some fights, and got all the crystals, reaching the top. i then tried to align them, by using logic, pointing certain combinations toward areas by inserting the gems and rotating the columns, toward where those areas were inside the zigguar. After hours of messing with this, the GM admitted that: You can;t do this unless you kill the enemies in a certain room.

I though, all-right, I guess they must be a key to making it work, somehow preventing the action that this mechanism would cause, or have some missing component, but no... When killed, they flat out said (when dying) what crystal to put where, and how to turn the columns. The actual solution made no sense, from any logical perspective, and could just as easily have been decided by random rolls.

Even the GM admitted it was idiotic, and decided from that point on to eradicate any kind of forced linearity. Good GMs reward play logic, intuition, and decision making. This story (a packaged module) was designed to punish it. It often baffles me on why module writers are so lazy: Many modules will put you in a place where you need clues to proceed, but not provide them.

A module book will tell a GM that there is a wall with pictographs on it. A good player will try to decipher the pictographs, but the module doesn't describe them beyond 'pictographs on a wall'. The GM needs to fill in that details to demanding players that actually pay attention to detail; and other modules simply ignore these details entirely.

A good puzzle can have more than one solution too, which is important to consider. You may try to ensure that there are at least two solutions to some puzzles, to allow a bit of player freedom in solving them.

#16 anikom15

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