{"id":8255,"date":"2017-12-19T21:59:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T21:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/312028"},"modified":"2017-12-19T21:59:00","modified_gmt":"2017-12-19T21:59:00","slug":"video-a-level-designers-guide-to-the-art-of-making-great-puzzles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/12\/19\/video-a-level-designers-guide-to-the-art-of-making-great-puzzles\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: A level designer&#8217;s guide to the art of making great puzzles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s so appealing about puzzles?<\/p>\n<p>For level designers, at least, puzzles are a great tool you can use to give players a means of acting\u00a0on your\u00a0game&#8217;s narrative with intent. At least, that&#8217;s what Ubisoft&#8217;s Jolie Menzel posited at GDC 2017 in her great talk on the art of using puzzles in game levels.<\/p>\n<p>Her talk zeroed in on what exactly a puzzle <em>is<\/em>\u00a0in the level design space, and explored techniques to create and refine puzzles that will elevate the player&#8217;s experience in your\u00a0level. She also shared some useful\u00a0techniques you can use to\u00a0evaluate and troubleshoot puzzles, hopefully avoiding\u00a0potential pitfalls and frustrations for your players.<\/p>\n<p>Menzel&#8217;s talk was both fun and informative, so make time to go back and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0xBJwrm9C8w\">watch it now completely free via the official GDC YouTube channel<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>In addition to this presentation, the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gdcvault.com\/\">GDC Vault<\/a>\u00a0and its accompanying\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UC0JB7TSe49lg56u6qH8y_MQ\/feed\">YouTube channel<\/a>\u00a0offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gdconf.com\/\">Game Developers Conference events<\/a>, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.<\/p>\n<p>Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC\u00a0already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gdcvault.com\/inquiry\/\">a GDC Vault subscription page<\/a>. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gdcvault.com\/demo\/\">GDC Vault group subscription page<\/a>. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gdcvault.com\/contact_us.php\">contact GDC Vault technical support<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s so appealing about puzzles? For level designers, at least, puzzles are a great tool you can use to give players a means of acting\u00a0on your\u00a0game&#8217;s narrative with intent. At least, that&#8217;s what Ubisoft&#8217;s Jolie Menzel posited at GDC 2017 in her great talk on the art of using puzzles in game levels. Her talk [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}