Critical Play: Puzzles

The puzzle game I chose to play was Teslagrad, by Rain Games. You explore a mysterious tower full of different contraptions and make use of some of these devices to delve deeper.

The special glove you collect lets you control the magnetism of certain objects.

This game seems to be targeting challenge and fantasy as the types of fun. The initial mechanics are just moving around, jumping, and climbing which sets up the game as any typical platformer. However, the designers built the game world such that there are certain peculiarities of this tower you find yourself in and they gradually give you new mechanics to learn and master, allowing for more intricate puzzles.

I think they did a good job with the pacing of each loop. When you acquire the glove that controls magnetism, the puzzles are very straightforward and the progress is linear. But very quickly, the puzzles become harder, and then when you feel like you’re getting the hang of it and get further into the tower, they introduce a new item/mechanic (‘blink’ shoes that teleport you a short distance forward). Again, the puzzles involving the new mechanic start out easy and get harder. But something I really enjoyed was that the puzzles needed you to combine your skills with all of the mechanics to progress. This pacing kept the game interesting and I was always wondering what the next new mechanic would be.

The puzzles involve all the different skills you’ll learn. Here, you need to know when/where to jump like in a normal platformer game as well as how the magnetism mechanic works.

The world essentially is the puzzles, and parts aren’t completely linear. As I played I found myself returning to place I had come to before, but this time since I unlocked a new mechanic, a new area of the map was revealed (through a puzzle that I wouldn’t have been able to solve before). I think this makes the world more interesting, but I felt that it made the overall experience a little difficult at times. There isn’t a map (AFAIK) and they don’t give much guidance as to where you need to go to unlock newer areas. It makes you really have to pay attention and build your own mental model of the space which can be tiring especially while you’re figuring out the puzzles at the same time.

I did stop though because I got lost and wasn’t sure where to go to find the next puzzle. Overall, I enjoyed the game, mostly because the pacing was well done and made me feel good about myself after figuring out each puzzle..