The Puzzle of Puzzles In Game Theatre
“A game is a set of rules (order) that dissolve into chaos. A puzzle is a challenge to be solved.” - Sondheim
Interactive (game) theatre often includes puzzles.
In some ways, the above formulation (from Matching Minds With Sondheim) exposes why this is often an issue: the game-theatre gives rules to interact, within which the guest has a great deal of freedom. But when the guest encounters a puzzle, they no longer have freedom in how to solve it; a puzzle usually has a 'right', or at least optimal, answer.
That is to say, for each guest, there is a tension between freedom and being-correct which can vary wildly, even within the individual.
To give the example of one regular guest at my events: when healthy, well-rested, and optimistic, they love having the freedom to be a person in a world, with as much imaginative space as possible. But in another mood, they simply like quietly solving a puzzle, or upholding social rules in a space.
Which explains why, in many shows, the moment when the game element (freedom within rules) collides with the puzzle element (constraint by rules) feels like a crash, rather than a dance.
There are various ways to deal with this. Typically:
Ensuring puzzles feel diegetic within the game (moving from game into puzzle). We are solving the optimal way for the strike team to enter the building, we are breaking the secretive scientist's code, we are trying to get out of this cell. We are, of course, narratively the sort of people who do such tasks and care about doing so.
Ensuring puzzles offer a reward within the game (moving from puzzle into game). If we solve this, we will be able to save our allies, find a scientific marvel, escape the prison. We are, again, people who want and need such information, or care about characters who do.
Turning the game into a puzzle. Most obviously, murder mysteries might seem like games, with rules to interact with them, but are usually closer to puzzles, with those rules merely limiting how it may be solved.
Nesting puzzles within specific game elements (containing puzzle within game). The real puzzle is solving characters' mysteries and personal struggles, or historic cold cases, or chess games that will impress an important aristocrat.
Escape rooms, of course, tend to nest narrative within puzzles. There are, in my limited experience, fewer game-rules to follow, excepting certain high-profile rooms in (mostly, it seems) Amsterdam.
The main thoughts this distinction triggered for me are these:
That I tend to prefer game-theatre to puzzle-theatre. A more thoughtful approach towards the transition may help that, as might a greater awareness of what proportion of an experience is game-y or puzzle-y. I am, of course, aware, that some people want maximal puzzling.
Further, that it might be interesting to design an experience in which games were nested within puzzles. For example, we are all lawyers working out the beneficiary of a coded will (puzzle).
Within that, there could be specific activities that are rules-based, such as chances for networking, or bidding on share prices that might be effected by the inheritance, or trying to persuade your boss to give you a promotion over other guests. These might reward you with hints for the puzzle, or indeed give chances to solve the puzzle through winning (for example, by unlocking other paths to solving the puzzle).
Most interestingly to me is the possibility of an experience where all puzzle solutions offer greater freedom within the game, or where puzzles have multiple viable outcomes. At a basic level, crossword puzzles with multiple viable solutions. At a much more interesting level, a trap in an ancient tomb where each possible solution expresses something about the faction behind it.
Finally, that puzzles and games are not the same thing, offer different forms of pleasure, and this is good to bear in mind.
