Puzzles and EnigMarch and some new games

[Afterward (Ryan Veeder)]

I’ve been doing EnigMarch over here, and I keep being lured by the idea of making text adventures that are also puzzle hunt-style puzzles, where there’s an “answer” in the form of a word or phrase. That’s what I did in the 2018 Mystery Hunt with The Lurking Horror II: The Lurkening—which was a little bit nasty, insofar as you could actually “beat the game” and still not know what the answer to the puzzle was. But, Mystery Hunt puzzles are supposed to be a little bit nasty.

On day 2 of EnigMarch the theme was “Nest,” and I wrote the game NEST, which is not very nasty at all. If you can finish the game, then you’ve solved the puzzle, and vice versa. And you can probably do this inside half an hour.

The day 13 theme was “Match.” I thought it would be really cool to write an entire Little Match Girl game in one day. But it took three days. It’s called How the Little Match Girl Got Her Colt Paterson Revolver, and Taught a Virtue to a Goblin, and it’s a somewhat substantial game. It is roughly as substantial as the first Little Match Girl game, or Winter Storm Draco, I think.

I hope you will enjoy some or all of these things!

[zarf (Andrew Plotkin)]

@Afterward

I keep being lured by the idea of making text adventures that are also puzzle hunt-style puzzles, where there’s an “answer” in the form of a word or phrase

I almost did this back in college with Praser 5. I had never done a puzzle hunt back then, though, so it doesn’t exactly fit the description.

@Afterward

That’s what I did in the 2018 Mystery Hunt with The Lurking Horror II: The Lurkening—which was a little bit nasty, insofar as you could actually “beat the game” and still not know what the answer to the puzzle was. But, Mystery Hunt puzzles are supposed to be a little bit nasty.

To people familiar with puzzle hunts, it’s not nasty at all, but expected. I’d say nearly all hunt puzzles have a step like that: “I’ve solved the crossword but I don’t see where the answer comes from.”

(On my puzzle team we have a shorthand “STDP”, and there’s always an experienced solver on deck to answer calls of “Help, I’ve solved this puzzle, but I need help Solving The Damn Puzzle!”)