Games are a Conversation

At an event, a KAMI player told me that working through the game felt like having a conversation with the person who designed the puzzles. I have remembered that comment.

The interface barely changes, but the problem does. A new arrangement can make you reconsider an approach that worked a moment ago. Over a sequence of levels, the designer can introduce an idea, let you recognise it and then change what you thought you had understood.

That is the part of puzzle design I wanted to write about here. The player is not simply receiving information. They answer by trying something, and the next puzzle can respond to the assumption behind that answer.

The three puzzles shown above are one such progression. Their shared palette and related triangular forms give the sequence a visual connection, while each arrangement changes the problem. I wanted that movement from recognition to reconsideration to feel like a conversation.