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Comment by robinhouston | Hacker News Reader

> I’ve met plenty of thinky players who reject any help not contained within the game itself—I’ve been that person—but these days, with so much to play, I simply don’t have the heart to ironman a puzzle for hours and hours just to maintain a sense of pride. I’d rather see more of what a game has to offer. Sue me.

I’m not going to sue the author, obviously; but it sounds as though he enjoys puzzle games in a different way and for a different reason from me, and I find it hard to relate to his feelings about them.

If your plan is to cheat as soon as you get stuck, I can’t imagine why you would choose to play a puzzle game at all. For me, what I enjoy about puzzle games is precisely the immense satisfaction that comes from conquering a well-designed puzzle after a struggle.

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Pretty simple: the pleasure I get from solving the puzzle is not always higher than the pain of trying to solve it. There is a limit and it's different for everybody.

When I do the New York Times crossword too, I'll try to figure it out without hints. If no progress for 10-20 minutes, I'm opening google. I enjoy it more this way.

I don't think it's a matter of different pain thresholds - for us who are into those kinds of games the struggle is part of the enjoyment. Just like some people like doing extreme sports or other hard activities and some prefer to scroll through tiktok for dopamine hits.

There has to be a point when the struggle is no longer enjoyalble, right? Outer Wilds had a puzzle that I was struggling hard with (for those who've played: the jellyfish one), and I had felt I did every permutation of things to complete it, but nothing worked. I only "figured it out" from a friend giving progressively heavier hints; and when I did I concluded I could not have completed the game at all without being nearly told.

Have you never had a puzzle like that? Where the "struggle" would entail sitting there staring at the puzzle with 0 clue for a few hours? A majority of puzzle games I've played have 1 or 2 of these, and they aren't even bad games.

> I don't think it's a matter of different pain thresholds - for us who are into those kinds of games the struggle is part of the enjoyment.

Weird thing to say in a thread where most of us are puzzle game fans. Who exactly are you speaking for?

I think this is why you have to be playing a few puzzle games "at the same time" - so when you get blocked/stuck in one, you can work on another.

I will admit that sometimes once I figure out "the trick" to the puzzle, I'll cheat and grab the solution rather than working it out by hand.

A little different than what you're saying, but you reminded me of an experience I had with Inside - which I enjoyed a lot overall, but -

There were a number of puzzles involving pushing boxes around, and something that really irritated me was that I would understand the solution but then have to go implement it by moving around and doing the pushing with somewhat clunky controls.

It was sort of interesting from a gameplay perspective - that feeling of "eureka" followed by "dammit, now I've gotta do this schlep work".

I found that many times with some of the new Zelda games - ok, what do I have, how do I do this, hhmmm, aha!

And then I know what I need to do, I know it's doable, and then I get frustrated trying to do it in game.

But like for games like the witness, there are key insights that would be a huge bummer to get spoiled on

The AAA game industry as a whole has encouraged this mentality in gamers. They make games which are basically movies that you have to put a bit of work into to watch. The concept of virtuous struggle and overcoming challenge -- which used to be the default in arcade games or consoles like the NES -- has been relegated to niche categories.

I agree with you though. The idea of having my sudoku puzzle spoiled for me by giving me a critical digit seems totally alien. They might as well be the kid blurting out answers in math class, depriving everyone else of learning. Of course many kids in the class were happy to have the "freebies" even though it contributed to lack of skills down the road.

I have a limit how much time I’ll spend on a puzzle. So if it exceeds that I don’t mind cheating to get to the next part.

My limit might be lower than yours but I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong having a limit that means you shouldn’t play puzzle games.

Is it cheating, though? I find it is more like bringing the games difficulty down to an acceptable level. I enjoy puzzle games, but often the puzzles boil down to combining everything in your inventory with everything in the game world (in LucasArts terms). That can simply be unfun for some of us in a game we otherwise enjoy. A variant of this is that I would e.g. enjoy open world-ish action combat fantasy games, but I really do not find the Souls like loop of git gud compelling at all, so I... basically don't play these games. But AA or AAA fantasy action games with this kind of presentation are (at the moment) basically only Souls like, so... yeah, great. At least for puzzle games I can "cheat" if one of the puzzles is simply illogical for my way of thinking, so I can skip over that part and go back to enjoying the rest of the game...

I don't think I've encountered that style of inventory-combining problem since the frustrations of Discworld, are there many modern games in that style?

When I think of puzzle games I think mostly of geometric reasoning problems like The Talos Principle and The Witness.

> Is it cheating, though?

Yes?

> I find it is more like bringing the games difficulty down to an acceptable level.

Yes, that's what cheating usually does? Apart from the extinct sub-genre of cheats like big head mode.

> Apart from the extinct sub-genre of cheats like big head mode.

Those are just easter eggs, which are not extinct.

> I enjoy puzzle games, but often the puzzles boil down to combining everything in your inventory with everything in the game world (in LucasArts terms).

Except they usually don't require you to do that. The so-called "moon logic" in those games might not follow the rules of our world but it is still a kind of logic that you can master nonetheless.

An excellent 3 part video from Elyot Grant [0] introduced me to the term "fiero" for this conquering after a struggle, in contrast to a simple "aha/eureka". The difference being one is transmissible, the other is not. Thought it was a nice distinction. Highly recommend the videos!

[0] Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCHciE9CYfA

Thanks for sharing that talk. Very interesting indeed!

I looked up the answer to some of the bird noise puzzles in the witness because I figured out (correctly) the concept, which was fairly obvious, but the actual noises in some of them were impossible to discern for me. that area was unique in that it required some actual skill beyond thinking about the puzzle

some of the harder ones I did screenshot and overlay in Inkscape and draw out the candidate shapes, which I guess isn't really cheating?

I like digging into well designed puzzles and figuring them out, but also - like the author, I like interacting with friends around puzzles and the group dynamic and power of bouncing things off of each other, as well as the reduced likelihood of stupid blind spots.

When I played through Blue Prince, I had an important area of the game undiscovered for in game weeks because I just didn't notice a path that was not meant to be hidden. It was in an area that it made no sense for me to further explore because it was challenging to get to and seemed to have nothing else to offer (I presumed until I had unlocked something further in the game). It was a big relief when I was talking through my progress with a friend who was further along than I, and they prompted me to go back and look again.

I had a very similar issue with Chants of Sennaar (another incredible game), where there were exactly 3 words I was missing, I knew what they were, but couldn't find them. I kept going anyway and found one (by a different method than usual), then eventually after scouring the whole map twice had to look it up and there was just a stairs down the edge of one section that I didn't see at all, but which also didn't respond to the "hint" button that normally shows you any direction you can go or thing you can interact with.

Also very glad I looked up the solution for the Obelisk puzzle in Fez as there was no way I was getting that (seemingly incredibly contrived, but apparently not correctly solved yet) solution.

It's hard to have a universal philosophy for puzzles - or depends a lot on how much you trust the designer. There are lots of tedious or unfair puzzles, which ruins the experience or expectations when you encounter a well designed puzzle.

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