#puzzle-design

#puzzle-design

Then you have , a more straight-faced collection of digital escape rooms, but with a much bigger focus on involved puzzles and deep mystery. Both are excellent, but only one of them has a sequel just released. Escape Simulator 2 came out this week, offering even more elaborately themed rooms and even more complex challenges to solve. I spoke to developers Pine Studio to find out more about how to find the balance between emulating real-world rooms, and embracing the impossibilities afforded by video games.

For many triple-A video games, appealing to a wide audience often means ensuring players can see a game to its conclusion. That sometimes translates to sanding down combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving to make it approachable as possible. But this can sometimes veer into making games too guided for their own good. Hell is Us tosses all of these conventions out of the window. Goodbye quest logs, maps, and objective arrows telling you where to go. By trusting players to figure things out, Hell is Us' smart level and puzzle design shine to create compelling and rewarding discoveries, despite middling combat and uneven storytelling.