How Jonathan Blow Designs a Puzzle

JONATHAN BLOW: It was very clearly the case that more ideas came out of the development process, and ended up in the final game, than I put into it as a designer. The process of designing the gameplay for this game was more like discovering things that already exist than it was like creating something new and arbitrary. And another way to say that is that there was an extent to which this game designed itself This is Game Maker's Toolkit, I'm Mark Brown.

That was Jonathan Blow talking about the rewindable platformer Braid at the Game Developer's Conference in 2011. What Blow's describing here is a philosophy of game design that he used when making both Braid and The Witness where rules and puzzles were discovered through programming and play-testing, rather than designed through the implementation of some preconceived idea. So with the Mario-like platformer Braid, he started with a mechanic - the ability to turn back time by a practically unlimited amount.

In the process of coding that, new ideas emerged. If he was rewinding the position of everything in the world, he could choose to not do that for certain objects, and thus make them immune to your ability to manipulate time. A rule was born. After implementing these new rules, Blow could play the game and look for consequences that he perhaps did not foresee. Like how if a moving platform was immune to time travel, the hero could rewind to a point where the platform is no beneath his feet, and would fall down as soon as he stops manipulating time.

That's kinda cool. So each puzzle became an illustration of one of those phenomena, so that by solving it, the player would stumble upon that interesting fact about Braid's unique universe - the same fact that Blow himself discovered while programming the game. A similar process was used in The Witness, where Blow made rules and puzzles by exploring the mechanic of drawing lines on a grid. Play testing this showed Blow that he was often partitioning grid cells - perhaps that could become a rule?

Which leads to situations like this. This puzzle is pretty easy to solve: you just loop around here and you're away. The next puzzle looks identical but you'll notice that the exit has moved. Now, using that same solution will cut off your access to the exit. So you have to solve it like this. Here, the mechanic of drawing a line inspired a rule about partitioning cells which had the consequence of cutting off your exit, which led to a puzzle illustrating this fact.

Describing the invention of this puzzle type at IndieCade in 2011, Blow said... JONATHAN BLOW: That came from asking these little known questions. It didn't come from a top-down imposition 'I want to make a puzzle type that... blah' Rather, it came from this very simple process of exploration very early in development. While Blow may have largely abdicated the duty of designing puzzles to, I dunno, the universe, he still has some important roles to play.

First, is making sure the ramifications of each change are explored to the fullest. In The Witness, Blow asked how every part of the game could be twisted, and that includes the grid, the cells, the line, the environment, and the panel. And in Braid, you'll notice that the consequences of each rule change are explored by every object in the game. In the world where objects can be immune to rewind, for example, there are puzzles where enemies, keys, doors, clouds, platforms, and even the player character have this property.

Blow's second job is to present the resulting puzzles in a way that will give the player the best possible set-up to discover the interesting fact at the heart of the conundrum. For example, he frequently uses misdirection to lull you into making a seemingly obvious move - only to show you that this is not correct. In the Braid puzzle "Hunt", you're told to kill all the monsters but they're set up in a way that if you kill them in the most obvious sequence, you're unable to solve the puzzle.

Misdirection like this stops the player from brute-forcing the puzzle and failing to grasp the interesting fact. And showing the player why something doesn't work is often part of that fundamental truth that Blow is illustrating in each puzzle. The designer also uses sequences, pairings and reprisals. If you come across a simple puzzle - like this one about trying to unlock two doors with one key - you'll likely come across a more substantial version in the same area.

And by using familiar layouts in different worlds, with different rules, you can see how the consequences have changed. This level is essentially repeated in Worlds 2 and 4, but the way time works in each means the solution is unique. Jonathan Blow also subverts the rules you're used to. In the level Irreversible, you have to realise that you must not use your rewind powers. And throws in traps, to catch out those who aren't thinking hard enough. In this level, the wacky way that time works means only one of these gates can be opened...

Blow's final job is to be ruthlessly curatorial, and edit out mechanics, rules, and puzzles that lack a sense of surprise, or overlap with each other, or fail to say anything interesting. Both Braid and The Witness were spin-offs of games that were shelved because their main mechanics didn't present a rich enough space to explore. And Blow killed off rules, like Braid's weird turn-based world, because their consequences weren't surprising, or the rules felt contrived.

But where Jonathan Blow will differ from other designers is that he deliberately left stuff in, even if it wasn't fun - simply because it was interesting or would make the game feel incomplete to remove it. Like this super weird puzzle where a key can bumble along on its own. It is, after all, a surprising and interesting consequence of this game's universe. Because for Jonathan Blow, a puzzle is never just a puzzle. It's a communication of an idea from the designer to the player. And solving the puzzle is the player's way of saying "I understand".

And I think "I understand" is a significantly different concept to "I finally figured it out", which is how many puzzle games operate with their arbitrary steps and intricate sequences and red herrings and obtuse mechanisms. But the puzzles in Blow's games feel more fair. And that's why this design philosophy isn't just about letting the design help direct you to the next rule or the next puzzle - it's also about helping you make better, and more honest puzzles.

Braid and The Witness introduce all the elements upfront and teach their mechanics quickly with introductory puzzles - from there the harder puzzles are only about understanding the consequences of those known mechanics in different set-ups, combinations, and layouts. And the puzzles can be blisteringly simple. Most are about exploring just one idea and the stages are small enough so you can consider all the moving parts at once. And there are no, or very few, red herrings, and also few arbitrary steps to finish. Once you've found the solution, it's relatively effortless to execute it.

So solving a puzzle in this game isn't like solving a Rubik's cube or trying to guess at the answer to a riddle. It's simply seeing something that was there all along. The answer was right in front of your eyes, if only you knew the right way to look at the world. Kinda like those hidden puzzles in The Witness. So that "a-ha!" moment you get when solving a puzzle isn't about finally putting together all the pieces or finally understanding what the hell the designer was asking you to do, but it feels like you just saw the world a bit more clearly.

As Jonathan Blow told Gamasutra, "the more that a puzzle is about something real and something specific, and the less it's about some arbitrary challenge, the more meaningful that epiphany is". Thanks for watching! One of my goals with GMT is to pass on the philosophies of the best game designers around so you can use their ideas in your own games. If you're interested, I've put loads of links in the description where Jonathan Blow talks more about the process.

And it's not just for puzzles games - Blow reckons that this process of letting the design dictate the rules and mechanics could be used in other genres, too. As always if you liked the show you can leave a comment, give me a thumbs up, subscribe on YouTube, or even support the show financially on Patreon like these endlessly awesome gold tier supporters...