I suspect there might be some people around here who’d be interested in EnigMarch, a month-long creative challenge in the style of Inktober or NaNoWriMo where you make a puzzle every day for a month, based on one-word prompts that are released every day in March. I thought it up two years ago to help me improve my puzzle design skills, and then a bunch of other people hopped on board, and now it’s a thing.
Lots of people make variety puzzles like mini word grids or emoji rebuses, but there’s also artists making hand-drawn puzzles, writers weaving 31 puzzles into a narrative arc, programmers coding mini block-pushing games, @Afterward writing sidestories in the Little Match Girl series…it’s always cool to see what people come up with!
(I made a mini parser game the first year, but there’s usually not enough time to go big like that anymore when I’m also organizing the thing.)
Just thought I’d share it in case anyone’s interested in following along! Even if you’re not designing puzzles, just checking in on the hashtag or the Discord is pretty fun.
Okay, you’ve sucked me in. I don’t know how much time I can devote to this, but the challenge could be inspiring.
I looked at last year’s prompts and reckon my games have included puzzles that incorporate roughly half of those prompts. I wonder whether it would be possible to write a game that incorporates all of the 2024 prompts. Probably not, but it would be fun trying.
It started!!! The prompt for Day 1 is DOOR. I made this puzzle:
I know it seems like the green glass door is very selective about what may pass through, but if you know the rule, you’ll see that tons of things are allowed!
Well, maybe not tons of things…
THINGS THAT MAY GO THROUGH THE GREEN GLASS DOOR:
Pee-Wee tells her that he’s a loner
Haunted hotel with hexagonal carpet
Valley where you’ll find the cast of The Polar Express (2004)
