A few months ago I played Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. Currently, I am playing Ocarina of Time.

Puzzles

One of the game elements of Zelda is puzzles. There are many kinds of puzzles: move a block so that it continuously presses down on a switch, change the water level so you can hop from floating block to floating block, bring the appropriate item to the appropriate place, etc.

Many of those puzzles are spatial puzzles: you solve them by developing an understanding of where things are, how rooms connect together, what parts can move in what direction. Most puzzles are also related to different objects. For example, until you acquire the boomerang, some switches remain out of reach.

Enemies as puzzles

In Zelda games, some enemies are also puzzles – this is especially true of bosses.

First, you have a range of weapons and tools at your disposal: a sword, a shield, a boomerang, a bow, etc. The precise list depends on which game in the series you are playing and at what point in the game you are.

Second, different enemies are vulnerable to different weapons. Additionally, some enemies are only vulnerable at certain times (e.g., just after they attack), in specific areas (e.g., the eyes), or under specific conditions (e.g., once stunned).

Thus, defeating an enemy consist mostly of finding the right combination of weapon/tool, timing and area. In the case where a specific condition is required, this becomes a two step puzzle: find the combination that triggers the required condition and the combination that works after that.

Solving problems and solving puzzles

Solving puzzles is fun: there is one solution to the puzzle and you get to solve it by understanding what the designer was thinking when they created it. Plus you get a few hints so you’re not just hitting switches at random until it works. And for the whole time, you know there is a solution.

The fact that “there is a solution” is what makes puzzle solving different from problem solving. A problem can have any number of solutions – hopefully at least one.

Solving problems is fun: there are different ways to approach a problem and you get to solve it by understanding the whole problem space. You sometimes have to think outside the box – i.e., think of possible solutions the designer had not envisioned. And amongst different solutions, you can chose one that you prefer.

Solving problems in video games

In some video games you solve problems (rather than puzzles).

In Deus Ex you can approach each level in multiple ways. And more importantly for problem solving: you get to use the environment in consistent ways. For example, some blocks can be carried and dropped. You can

• use these blocks to build a climbable structure and gain access to a building through a window,
• use these blocks to force a patrol to change route,
• use these blocks to block the view of a CCTV,
• use these blocks along with proximity triggered explosives for a trap,
• drop these blocks from a window to make some noise in the courtyard so that guards go and check it out
• etc.

In this game, you have some tools/weapons, environment elements, predictable AIs for game characters, a simplified version of the laws of physics, and some objectives to accomplish. How you use the tools/weapons, environment, AIs, and physics to accomplish your objectives is up to your imaginations. You can even ignore the environment altogether and rush in all guns blazing!

Solving problems in games

Video games have limitations: their simulation of physics is a crude approximation, the enemy AIs follow specific rules, etc. Whilst these limitations are pushed, they are still noticeable.

A way to go beyond these limitations is to replace the simulation agent (the computer simulating the physics and the AIs) by a human: play a role-playing game around a table. (Arguably, you trade the computer’s limitation for the limitations of a group of people.)

In a role-playing game, characters have skills (tools) and motivations (objectives). The players use the former to accomplish the latter. The game master provides a simulation of the world based on the rules.

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Update from 2019-07-22

Breath of the Wild

The latest game in the Zelda series, Breath of the Wild (BotW), breaks with the puzzling tradition of former Zelda games. BotW has a game engine where fire spreads, rocks fall, balloons float up, lightning strikes metal, etc. The physics/chemistry engine is even intertwined with the magic (or, indistinguishably, otherworldly technology) whereby objects momentum can be zeroed and set anew.

There are still some puzzles in BotW. Most notably the shrines tend to offer a single solution to a relatively well-defined problem. But by and large the game is about problem- (rather than puzzle-) solving.

Even enemy encounters are problems that have many solutions. All of the properties of the physics/chemistry engine mentioned above can be used in a fight: set fire to the grass on which enemies awaits, send rocks tumbling down onto an enemy camp, attach some balloons to an explosive barrel, throw a metal weapon onto an enemy just as lightning is about to strike.