Lara Croft Go: Puzzles and Experience

Lara Croft Go is a brilliant puzzle game for Android and iOS (and PlayStation and PC). It's immaculately designed. Players traverse exotic dungeons in search of ancient artifacts. Playing the game involves solving spatial puzzles by moving Lara, turn by turn, through boards of deadly creatures and traps. The game is divided into seven themed books, each filled with a number of chapters, themselves comprised of three or so puzzles each.

Puzzle Games

Lara Croft Go is a particular type of puzzle game. It's type is defined by two tenants:

-It has finite options

-It has perfect information

The game's being finite means there are a limited number of actions allowed at any given time: Lara can move and act in very few ways each turn.

The game's having perfect information means that players know what will happen in response to every action and how the game elements themselves will act and react at any given time.

Strategy Games

Let's discuss how puzzle games differ from single-player strategy games. Let's consider Fire Emblem, for example, specifically The Blazing Sword for GameBoy Advance (because that's the one I've played).

Fire Emblem is finite because players have only so many actions they can choose from at any given time. Though the player's options are significantly greater compared to a game like Lara Croft Go, because there are many more units on the fields and the player can move them in any order, technically the player is still restricted.

Fire Emblem is not a game with perfect information, but it does come close. The AI is governed by a very simple set of rules. For example, opposing units will always attack the weakest of the player's units within their range, ignoring units who may be closer but stronger. So therefore, players can confidently predict, if not outrightly know, how the AI will act.

However, attacks in Fire Emblem have odds of being successful. Any element of a game that is random is referred to as RNG (random number generator), as a shorthand. Players must consider their chances when deciding how to act. And even if the game did have perfect information and were wholly a puzzle game, it's far too complex to solve easily.

Puzzle Solving Methods

Puzzle games that are finite and have perfect information are solvable by a number of methods. There is overlap between these methods, but it's fun to consider the nuances between them.

Solve Ahead/Logic

Observe and analyze the puzzle and plan your actions in advance. Then execute. No action is necessary until the puzzle has been mentally solved.

Exploration and Experimentation

Explore the puzzle and observe. Moving your piece around the board opens new perspectives and visibility of new board states.

Elimination

Trial and error. Because there are finite possibilities, eliminate them one by one.

Deduction

By looking at the puzzle, assume what's likely.

Try and Fail

Acknowledge that you won't solve the puzzle on your first attempt, and enjoy the process of figuring it out.

Luck

Brute force. When all else fails, just keep doing your best. Eventually, you might get lucky 

In reality, we solve puzzles with a mix of these methods. Everyone solves ahead, even if by only a couple of moves. But very few possess the mental capacity or memory to solve complex puzzles entirely in advance. I certainly do not. I can plan ahead maybe four turns; then I'm tapped out.

Puzzle Solving Process

The puzzle solving process more commonly happens in stages. Puzzles in Lara Croft Go are constructed in stages connected by branching paths. Advancing through a stage involves identifying the correct path by eliminating dead ends.

Observe

Observe the puzzle to grasp its structure and elements, particularly the obstacles and danger most near.

Deduce

This is almost an instinctual response. Rapidly derive a solution given your understanding of the game's rules and your assumptions about the designer's wiles.

Plan

Plan your solution. Planning is technically process of elimination. You're just eliminating wrong answers mentally. Pretty soon, you reach a point where you're confident enough to advance safely, if not correctly. That might only be two steps, but you need to plan only so far as the next branching path to commit, especially if you know you're able to return to the board's current state without hitting an end-state. In Lara Croft Go, an end-state is either death or immobility, forcing a restart.

Explore and Experiment

This is where players spend most of their time. You've reached a point where the puzzle is too complex to plan ahead any farther. There are too many branching paths to eliminate, so the next recourse is to explore the board and experiment with it, like a toy. Your optimal goal at this point is to explore each path while avoiding an end-state.

Eliminate

As you experiment with the mechanics and board states, you'll begin to eliminate bad paths. Eliminate enough paths, and eventually you'll find the right one.

As long as you avoid an end-state, you can explore the solution infinitely and, by elimination, are guaranteed to eventually succeed. With careful enough observation and sufficient planning, it's absolutely possible to solve every puzzle on your first attempt.

Get Lucky

Eliminate enough wrong steps, and eventually you'll find the right step, even if you happen upon it by surprise.

Puzzle Examples

Let's look at a few examples.

Solve Ahead

The Maze of Snakes - The Canyon of a Thousand Snakes - Puzzle Three

Here's a great example of a puzzle being solvable in advance, and being fun to do so too. By this point in the game, players have learned the mechanics of the snake and of the spear, so this puzzle is purely application.

This is also a good example of a puzzle having "breathing room", meaning superfluous options. The entire left column can be removed from the puzzle; none of those spaces are used in solving it. But then the player would have too few branching paths. "Solving" the puzzle would involve traveling down the only path available (more or less). Part of the challenge in puzzle design, at least for the designer's of Lara Croft Go, was finding a balance of complexity.

Eliminate

The Maze of Snakes - The Canyon of a Thousand Snakes - Puzzle Four

Here's the very next puzzle. It's the exact same challenge but more complex. Sucker Punch calls this M+1. It's unnecessary to solve this puzzle ahead. Instead, solving the puzzle looks much like the process detailed earlier; it's solved in stages by eliminating branching paths.

The first two moves are scripted, but then, once you have the spear, you've arrived at four branching paths.

They are:

-Right

-Left

-Forward

-Throw the spear at the snake down the line

Right is eliminated easily. It's immediate death. Most everyone would conclude this without needing to actually witness it.

Left starts off fine. You'll survive the move, but then you'd have only one choice: kill the snake from behind. But observing ahead to the consequences of that decision, you'd conclude that the next snake would kill Lara. Because this path leads to death pretty much immediately, you can close off the option and consider your final two paths available.

Snakes lunge at Lara only when she moves to the adjacent space. So stepping forward is a safe option. And so is throwing the spear. However, the spear is a precious resource, and since advancing forward is safe, there's no reason to throw the spear. So, of the four paths, you'll quickly identify the correct one. And then repeat.

The Maze of Spirits - Using the Trap - Puzzle Three

Here's a much more complicated example of process of elimination. But it can also be an example of "getting lost in the woods". The branching paths become so long and winding that you may be on the wrong path entirely for ages and ages.

Red Herrings

The Maze of Stones - The Dam's Edge - Puzzle Two

Here's a red herring, or a trap. You need to think two moves ahead to survive. As the puzzles become more difficult, you start to assume that the obvious next step is probably wrong.

The Maze of Stones - Through the Web - Puzzle One

Here's another red herring. This is a good example of where you can "go down the rabbit hole". Once you've decided that a single way is the only way, you may spend significant time trying to prove a mistaken assumption. You're twiddling your thumbs, but you just haven't realized it. Eventually, you'll either give up or try something else -- out of boredom more often than realization.

Luck

The Cave of Fire - The Burnt Tree - Puzzle One

...two hours later

 

Best Puzzle

The Maze of Spirits - The Doorstep of Spirits - Puzzle Two

This puzzle is ingenuous. Just very clever design.

Most Impossible Puzzle

The Cave of Fire - A Restless Chase - Puzzle Two

Experience

While playing Lara Croft Go, I often asked myself if there was a "right" way to solve a puzzle. Not if there was a correct solution, but rather a proper method of approach. Did the designers intend for the puzzle to be solved in a certain way? 

I completed Lara Croft Go without cheating. But I often struggled to tackle puzzles in a way that felt earned. Several puzzles took two hours to solve, and I "solved" a couple purely by luck. I did not see the answer until I'd accidentally found it. I expected more from myself, to be better at solving ahead, and I felt guilty that I didn't measure up. I felt like I was failing at the game.

My guilt derives from an unfortunate affliction of perfectionism and the belief that the only excuse for failing at the game, as it felt to me, was my own cognitive limitations. So solving a puzzle via excessive elimination, and certainly by luck, was emotionally equivalent to cheating.

Games are all alike in that they're experienced and felt. Ultimately, a player's emotional response to playing a game is the game. Everyone's experience is unique and personal. A game may be invigorating to some but frustrating to others. Or blissful, and to others boring. 

Greg Kassavin was once asked if Hades was his best game. He responded that he doesn't think of his games that way. For some people, nothing will match their own experience playing Transistor, and the meaning it has to them. For others, Bastion was significant for them. Or Pyre. Or Hades. The games themselves are defined by their emotional experience, not some objective quality.

All of this is to say that my having perfectionist tendencies made for my own experience with Lara Croft Go, in the form of frustration with myself. Someone whose mind functions more fluidly may better enjoy the exploration process. Which I did enjoy as well, a lot, but it was intermixed with guilt.

So asking yourself what's the "right" way to play the game, the answer is not which method of solution did the designers intend, but what approach is most pleasurable, for you, or puts you into a flow state. But even that argument is invalid. Because there's no right way to play a game. There's no right experience or wrong experience.

On a livestream of Previously Recorded, Rich and Jack talk about the Platinum game Vanquished, which they had both just played. Rich played the game aggressively. He said that's how the game was meant to be played. That was the intention, he said, and that's how it is most fun. Jack, however, played conservatively. He played from cover, rarely exposing himself or charging in. He satisficed. You might also call it cheesing the game (though I hate the term).

Rich very much enjoyed Vanquished. Jack very much did not. Jack's argument was that the game, in its design, did not force him to play aggressively, so therefore it was advantageous to play cautiously because he had greater odds of winning.

So is it anyone's fault that Jack did not enjoy the game? If Platinum intended for players to engage aggressively, is Platinum at fault for failing to design the enemies and arenas in a way that forced that behavior? Or is Jack at fault by playing Vanquished the "wrong" way and subjecting himself to an unenjoyable experience. What if, while playing, Jack recognized that he may enjoy the game better if he were to approach combat aggressively? What if, despite this recognition, Jack could not force himself to play that way because of his own biological predispositions and behavioral inclinations?

All of these are fair arguments. But here's another perspective. Perhaps there is no wrong way to play the game. Perhaps Jack and Vanquished just don't match. Because it's likely that another player engaged in combat conservatively too, but actually liked their time with the game.

Ubisoft has trended towards freedom of approach in all of their IPs, and I think this is partly why. Splinter Cell: Conviction and Splinter Cell: Blacklist are perfect examples. Assassin's Creed is another. Watch Dogs is another. Far Cry is another.

Our experience playing a game is only partly influenced by a game's design. When a game matches the player perfectly, the experience is frictionless. For me, this is Sly Cooper and Burnout 2. Ghost of Tsushima is a more recent example. But despite a likely attempt, some day, I very much doubt I will enjoy Sekiro. Other players thrive on the challenge and the satisfaction of success. This friction is basically flow theory at a grander scale. Most games, though, I would say are experienced with grades of friction. I absolutely loved Lara Croft Go, but the complete truth is that my experience was marred by my own expectations.

Think to games you've played. What games have been frictionless experiences? What games will you never enjoy? And most of all, with what games have you experienced some friction? And why? When you consider your opinion of those games and your recommendations for improvement, how much is influenced by your subjective experience with a game's elements mismatching your play style or mindset?

Feel like discussing. Check out the tweet.

A Tangent on Splinter Cell

And here's a tangent on Splinter Cell that I wrote, but it didn't fit into this essay. I wanted to share my thoughts anyway.

Until Blacklist, Splinter Cell necessitated a very specific approach. They, and stealth games in general, are essentially puzzle games, in fact. But Splinter Cell never sold as well as many of Ubisoft's other franchises, so the company mandated that the next game appeal to a broader audience. The designers realized that they would therefore need to design Blacklist to appeal to the aggressive shooter market, but also not alienate their core fans. So they designed Blacklist to allow for a variety of play styles.

Unfortunately, there isn't much evidence that their new design model was effective at increasing sales. Long-time Splinter Cell players lamented the new style, saying that it was "watered down." This isn't actually accurate because the stealth design is as strong as ever, though it is missing some of the intimacy and pace of Chaos Theory. Conversely, I'm fairly certain that the series will never attract those who gravitate towards aggressive shooters. It's unfortunate because both games are excellent, and Blacklist in particular has perhaps the best level design I've ever played.

Ubisoft recognized that not every game is for every person. But they're an enormous company that spends the most on development of any in the world. Their concern is not only to recoup their costs, but also turn significant profits because if one game isn't, then another game might. They want to capitalize on their resource investment. The sentiment of the design is to allow a broader swath of players to enjoy Splinter Cell on their own terms. Their marketing, however, was not effective at selling this intention, despite their building explicit play styles into the scoring system in Blacklist.