FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
Conceptual Reasoning and Lateral Thinking Puzzles
Conceptual reasoning puzzles and lateral thinking puzzles are in the same section because they both require extrinsic knowledge, that is, knowledge from outside the domain of the challenge itself. This sets them apart from formal logic puzzles in which all the knowledge required to solve the puzzle must be contained within its definition. Lateral thinking puzzles and conceptual reasoning puzzles may still require the use of logical thinking, however.
Conceptual reasoning puzzles require the player to use his reasoning power and knowledge of the puzzle's subject matter to arrive at a solution to a problem. In one round of the online multiplayer game Strike a Match, a number of words or phrases appear, and as they do, the player must find conceptually related pairs: if Kong appears, should the player watch out for a match with King (a movie) or Hong (a place) or Donkey (a video game)?
Another sort of conceptual challenge occurs in mystery or detective games in which the player must examine the evidence and deduce which of a number of suspects committed the crime and how. In the game Law and Order, based on the television series of the same name, players follow clues, ignore red herrings, and arrive at a theory of the crime, assembling the relevant evidence to demonstrate proof. In order to succeed, however, the players must have some familiarity with police forensic techniques as well as an understanding of human motivations for committing crimes. These details are extrinsic knowledge, not spelled out as part of the definition of the puzzle.
You may find designing conceptual reasoning challenges a lot of fun because they offer a lot of scope to the designer, but you'll work harder when creating these than putting together simpler trials such as physical or exploration challenges.
Lateral thinking puzzles are related to conceptual reasoning puzzles, but they add a twist: The terms of the puzzle make it clear to the player that what seems to be the obvious or most probable solution is incorrect (or the necessary elements to achieve the obvious solution are unavailable). The player must think of alternatives instead. A classic test of lateral thinking—and one used to demonstrate that chimpanzees possess this faculty—requires the subject to get an item down from a high place without using a ladder. Deprived of the obvious solution, he must find some other approach, such as putting a chair on top of a table, climbing up on the table, and then climbing up on the chair. Because chairs do not ordinarily belong on tables, and neither chairs nor tables are intended for climbing, the test requires the subject to transcend his everyday understanding of the functions of objects.
Lateral thinking puzzles often require the player to use extrinsic knowledge gained in real life, but to use it in unexpected ways. In Escape from Monkey Island, the player has to put a deflated inner tube onto a strange-looking cactus to make a giant slingshot (or catapult), which requires knowing that inner tubes are stretchy. Adventure games frequently include lateral thinking puzzles. You must be careful not to make the solution too obscure or to rely on information that goes beyond common knowledge; you can expect the average adult player to know that wood floats, but you cannot expect the player to know that cork comes from the bark of certain species of Mediterranean oak tree (that challenge belongs in a trivia game). Provide hints or clues to help a player who gets stuck. In general, the more realistic the game, the more it may rely on extrinsic knowledge because players know that they can count on their real-world experience as being meaningful in the game world. In a highly abstract or highly surreal game, the player won't expect common-sense experience to be of any use. Such games may still include lateral thinking puzzles, but you must provide the knowledge the player needs to solve them within the game.
As Chapter 8, "User Interfaces," explains, the user interface links the input devices in the real world to actions that take place in the game world. Actions, in this sense, refer to events in the game world directly caused by the user interface interpreting a player input. If the player presses a button on a game controller and the user interface maps that button to striking a cue ball in a game of pool, striking the cue ball constitutes an action. If the cue ball knocks another ball into a pocket, that is an event, but not an action; the movement of the other ball is a consequence of the player's action.
Actions are the verbs of the game, and the way in which the player usually thinks about his play: "I run, I jump, I punch, I buy, I build." On arcade machines, each input device is usually labeled with a verb: Fire, Boost, and so on. When you define the player's role in the concept stage of game design, you should make a list of some of these verbs. If the player's role is to be a cowboy, what does a cowboy do? Don't think in high-level terms ("protect the cattle") but in terms of verbs that might be assigned to input devices ("spur the horse," "fire his gun," "sell a cow," and so on.)
