Following the Rules: Immersive Puzzles

Haley ER Cooper says, of puzzles that are immersive instead of just on-theme:

Why would someone place a web of interconnected challenges in this particular location for someone to solve in exactly 60 minutes? This is typically not a thing a human would do to begin with. So we’re on the hunt for exceptional humans. It’s easiest to say “a serial killer is testing you,” or “there’s a secretive magician, inventor, or spy who left behind these weird things for you to decode,” or (my favorite) “there’s a supernatural power at work here that needs you to do its will”—there’s a reason why these themes are so popular. But there are other explanations out there. Get creative. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.

Here are some ways to “get creative” – puzzles that are both fun to solve and realistic to encounter in the context of a story, that don’t exist only because an in-universe human decided that it would be fun to make people solve puzzles.

It turns out that all of the types of puzzle I’ve listed here have two things in common:

• consistent sets of rules

• that are unique enough to be novel.

So, I’m sure there are some potential puzzle types that I’m missing here. What other things that you encounter in your day-to-day have unique, consistent sets of rules? They might be an opportunity for an immersive puzzle.

The other thing about unique, consistent sets of rules is that they usually take time (and groups, and pencils and paper) to decipher. That means these puzzle types aren’t always the best fit for a 60-minute escape room, or anything else where players are under a lot of time pressure. It might be hard to stay focused on deciphering an alphabet while your teammates are busy unlocking a secret room.

On the other hand, these kinds of puzzle work great for ARGs or longer experiences where you’d like to keep your players busy and give them a deeper world to explore. The way you communicate (or keep quiet about) the rules of your system, and the ways in which players have to ultimately use those rules, can be an opportunity to quietly share lots of information about your world. Think about the difference between translating fragments of love poetry and cursing an ancient god in a forbidden tongue, or the way it would feel to complete exercises in a magic textbook versus deciphering a wizard’s scattered notes on opening a portal. Each of those pairs could have identical puzzle mechanics, but the feel can be totally different!

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Here are my favorite ways to involve systems of unique, consistent rules in a story:

Languages and alphabets

Translating a language or an alphabet given only limited information is a great puzzle opportunity. (I recommend inventing your own language or alphabet to avoid potential sequence-breaks from players who happen to be fluent in a language you’ve chosen.) Check out the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad problems for inspiration on linguistics puzzles.

Math and programming

These can be hard to make engaging for people who don’t have prior experience and hard to make difficult enough for people who do. A simple system that is different from what someone may have learned in school works best. There can be lots of excuses for this type of puzzle, mainly sci-fi: program this malfunctioning android! Solve the alien math problem to figure out how to pilot the spaceship! Hack the target’s computer! The Esolangs wiki can be a good place to find inspiration for obscure programming puzzles.

Magic systems

The advantage here is that you can completely make things up, using maaaaagic as an excuse. Languages and math have to be believably used by human beings, but magic can work any way it wants to (or the spirits want it to, or the gods want it to…) There’s also great visual potential: it can be really exciting to learn that a giant magic sigil or summoning circle that you assumed was just for flavor actually has a specific meaning that you can decipher. Complex magic systems can also allow for emergent narrative: can players create their own spells? What can those spells do?

Bureaucracy

AKA “make the players do my taxes.” Why do you have to write these numbers on this form and then hold it up against another form and copy every other number to this box? Why do I have to bring these five types of document to this counter to get my paperwork?? No clue, ask the IRS. The big challenge with bureaucracy puzzles is making them actually fun and not soul-suckingly boring, but with a healthy dose of humor and whimsy, anything is possible.

Following instructions or directions

This one falls less into the realm of “puzzle” and more into the realm of “task,” but it can still present a challenge if done correctly. If you provide your players with a map of your game’s area and then have a local tell them to “go down the street with the library, then turn left at the apple tree, then…” can they find where they’re supposed to end up? Or, can they successfully follow a set of instructions for a missing character’s bookbinding project, keeping track of all the page numbers and supplies in order to end up with a readable final product? The game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is a good example of a puzzle which consists entirely of following instructions.

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Ultimately, making an entire game out of immersive puzzles is quite difficult. Unless you do happen to have a very strange individual in your game’s world who likes making puzzles, it may be impossible to have every single one be justified. After all, how many days in your life have been spent solving puzzles that weren’t intended to be puzzles¹? But if you’re looking for a way to draw players into the world of your game with puzzles, I think these are a great starting point.