Design Journal 3 – RPG vs. Puzzle: Structure Showdown

     RPG and puzzle games are a bit of an interesting pair of genres to talk about here, and I'll confess that I have more experience with the former than the latter by a significant margin. However, I still think I'll have some good stuff to talk about here.

    The puzzle game, or rather puzzle game trilogy, I have the most recent experience and prominent experience with is the BoxBoy! trilogy on Nintendo 3DS, a series of sidescrolling puzzle-platformers wherein the player character, the eponymous BoxBoy, must cross gaps, press switches, and block lasers to reach the end of each stage by creating connected chains consisting of only a limited number of boxes (the precise quantity of which varies from stage to stage). I can't recall precisely how sequels expand the ability set, though they do, but that's the gist of it.

    In the BoxBoy! games, you generally have just that one ability set for the whole game, and the sense of progression comes from being pitted against tougher and tougher puzzles to solve using them by applying what you've learned about the game's mechanics and interactions from previous puzzles. In theory, you could modify the game to load the player directly into the final stage and it would be entirely clearable from the get-go; the player's knowledge and mindset is their key tool and the only thing that really "levels up" in a game like this.

    Contrast this with an RPG like, say, Dragon Quest III. There is still a puzzle-like quality to it; the player must make use of the resources at their disposal to overcome challenges before them (in this case, mostly enemies). However, unlike most puzzle games, a major part of RPGs is often expanding your toolkit; increasing your characters' stats, getting them new skills and equipment, even recruiting new party members entirely. If you find yourself stuck on a difficult battle, the best course of action may well be to leave for the time being and snoop around for any gear that may help, work to improve your characters' stats and learn new skills for them, etc., then return to the obstacle with your newfound power.

    Puzzle games don't generally provide this option. In Baba Is You, for example, the game utilizes a world map that allows you to open up access to multiple new puzzles to take on at once. You have, relatively speaking, quite a lot of freedom in terms of the order in which you want to do things. If one puzzle is giving you trouble, you can always just go tackle a different one... but there's nothing you can bring back from that puzzle to help with others that stumped you. At least, nothing save knowledge in your real-life human brain.

    It's interesting, because there are really quite a lot of similarities that crop up in puzzle games and RPGs, or at least between certain subsets of each. There are puzzle games and RPGs both that involve exploring a world to gather clues to what you need to do to move forward. Both genres typically do not involve much in the way of real-time obstacles or dangers and instead prioritize the player's ability to assess a situation and make smart decisions as to how to use their abilities.

    The defining difference in mode of play, I think, comes from RPGs often allowing for accumulation of resources and the potency thereof over the course of the game, while puzzle games generally don't. What this tends to mean is that puzzle games have more tightly-tuned puzzles built around a fixed toolkit, since they know that any player facing a given puzzle with have exactly a certain set of resources, no more and no less. In contrast, RPGs, by nature, kind of have to be at least somewhat more free-form in their challenge and solution structure. There are usually at least some impactful items, abilities, even entire party members it's possible to not have when facing a given challenge, or even possible to miss permanently within a given playthrough. As such, the designers can't assume the player does have those things, but they can't assume they don't, either.

    Intelligent Systems' Fire Emblem series provides an interesting case study in the consequences of this: the early-game maps are generally pretty tightly-designed, since the developers know more or less exactly what the player will or won't have at that point and can tailor early maps specifically to the player's team and resources at that point in the game. Late in the game, however, maps sort of devolve into being more "generic" challenges significantly less tailored to any particular sort of team composition. Who has the player decided to train and invest in? How have they customized those units? Have any characters been lost to the series's permadeath mechanic? There's so much the developers can't be certain of with respect to the player's resources so far into the game that they kind of have to design those maps to allow for completion via a wide array of strategies and team compositions to mitigate the possibility of softlocks. Later-game Fire Emblem has kind of developed a reputation within the fanbase as less interesting to play than the early-games as a result. Puzzle games do often sidestep this issue, but the trade-off is that they give up the sense of freedom and player customization many RPGs offer by comparison.

    These two genres are actually kind of siblings in my eyes, and the boundary between them can get pretty fuzzy in places. Of course, they're also both diverse genres in themselves; I picked specific examples I felt facilitated drawing comparisons, but there are subgenres of each that venture pretty far from the other's wheelhouse. Nevertheless, I think it would benefit someone looking to make a game in one of these genres to have at least a passing familiarity with the other, considering the DNA they share.