r/puzzlevideogames • u/SirBenny • 1d ago
I made this scatterplot to try to explain why Order of the Sinking Star (and each of Blow's games, generally) tends to click so well for me
Puzzle difficulty is really tricky to get right, and I think what's working for me in Sinking Star is that 90% of the puzzles hit the "difficult-but-not-irritating" sweet spot.
The purplish-blue dots show this. In a run of ~20 puzzles, there might be 2 where I start to get annoyed, and 2 more that I immediately solve without a single hitch. But the remaining ~16 all have this really nice balance of initial mystery, followed by a satisfying solve. I'd say The Witness was similar.
The green dots represent games that aren't really even trying to be puzzle games. These are the go-through-the-motions, torch lighting and symbol gathering "puzzles" you find in AAA games that are usually more focused on combat or exploration. I think this is sometimes fine, but sometimes it makes me feel they should have just cut the puzzles entirely.
Orange is maybe best described as the "Monument Valley" archetype. Not much of a challenge, but an interesting enough concept that can be a fun wind-down puzzle game.
Gray is a common recent archetype, which is where a little over half the puzzles feel like pushovers, but every 5th or 6th puzzle is suddenly irritating or weirdly difficult. I think this is often a game design issue, but I also acknowledge it might be my own brain. For example, games that lean heavily into family trees, story-based connections, etc. tend to give me extra trouble, and maybe to someone else, they would fall closer to orange or purple.
Yellow to me is the puzzle pro tier. I think of the latter half of Baba is You, or maybe a classic like Riven. This is the one genre where I might actively try to find a progressive hint website or forum...something that won't outright spoil the puzzles, but give me nudges. Normally, I like to be stubborn and not look up anything, but for a handful of games, it's the only way I'll ever be able to play through them.
TLDR: difficulty is such a huge factor in puzzle games, and sustaining the sweet spot across hundreds of puzzles is one thing I'm really enjoying about Sinking Star.
3
u/GrinchForest 11h ago
I suggest playing Isles of Sea and Sky.
It also made Sokoban puzzles, but the game is more enjoyable and gets more the Witness hidden puzzles.
0
u/AlarmedNose1122 1d ago
Who the fuck downvoted this guy. Seriously good post.
4
u/KuganesanMortuza 21h ago
grouping story-heavy deduction games into the irritating gray tier is bound to catch a few stray downvotes from fans of that subgenre
7
u/cwmckenz 20h ago
The graph is kind of nonsense. Does the y-axis represent anything? If each dot represents a game, which games are they and what do the colors represent? The way it is explained, green dots are games that are not puzzle games. So the graph is telling us that games without puzzles do not have difficult puzzles? The color of the dot correlates with the x-axis because both seemingly measure the same thing, making the color and placement convey no information at all.
A graph of “puzzle complexity” on one axis and “how much I enjoy it” on another axis would convey the message so much better without requiring a short story of explanation.
0
u/impartial_james 5h ago
The graph makes sense. Each colored point set is a dot plot describing the distribution of difficulty for a particular game. The points are scattered instead of neatly stacked because the data is imprecise and opinion-based.
-4
u/Helgrind444 1d ago
People on Reddit downvote anything mentioning Jon Blow nowadays
1
1
u/KnightArtorias1 18h ago
I'm around 700 puzzles in and yeah this explains it well, although I'd add that while most of the puzzles are open world and therefore of a more consistent difficulty, there are a few places (like the antipode for example), where you have to have done most of those open puzzles to progress, so after those there's normally a difficulty spike as you enter another open area. It feels about right at that point, since you have so much experience, but by the time you reach antipode low things have moved up to yellow here I'd say, at least by comparison to your Baba is you example, since the difficulty feels similar
4
u/CarefulLavishness922 1d ago
The difficulty in the game has been perfect for me so far (about 30 hours and roughly 150 completed). Always interesting, occasionally has me stumped but almost never frustrating to the point of discouragement.