Adding Puzzles?

I’ve been trying to think of some sort of usable puzzle mechanic for a character to traverse a dangerous area/sneak past some guards without it just being trial and error, and I’m having trouble thinking of something. My first thought was a maze where the player chooses directional options and the image changes accordingly, but this seems like it would be tedious to play through. There’s also nothing I can think of as far as item use or similar, since there’s not really areas to pick up items and that would involve adding in even more rooms and scenes. All I can think of or find by googling is riddles/word scrambles, but those don’t really fit with the tone I’m going with. Any suggestions?

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things that have been done in CoG/HG games:

labyrinths
remember the word/name the difference
anagrams

Some did it better than others, some worse.

But yeah, mazes are tedious to play through, especially if the reward is absolutely meaningless

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Perhaps riddles? No better ideas.

What exactly is the difference between a maze and a labyrinth in this kind of game?
Also, I mentioned in my original post that word scrambles and stuff like that don’t really fit with what I’m trying to accomplish of getting a character to traverse an area with hazards/guards.

Maze, by definition, is a harder version of a labyrinth. Though it doesn’t matter which word you use in the game.

Math/Timing puzzle?

Enemy A walks in a round every X minutes, tile B will turn into a trap and kill you if you stay on it for more than Y minutes, certain gates are opened/closed at fixed times, etc.

Maybe give a grid map with the MC’s current position as coordinates, drop the relevant information as hints throughout the game?

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Since your story is involving the guards - make the challenge a behavioral challenge. Depending on the story and your goals here you can have the MC/reader pass a series of challenges where they need to chose options that do not raise the guard’s suspicions and for each choice body, have a “check” on the guards to see if their suspicions remain unaroused or aroused.

Without the context of your story it is hard to nail down specifics.

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Lone Wolf Saga has some “mathematical analysis” riddle in the series (something like “A is x years old, and B is y years old. Z years later, blablabla”). Kinda cool, tho.
Other than that, you may also include something like “guess the perpetrator” riddle, which is done in CoG Metahuman Inc.


For your secret fortress infiltration riddle,

you can give the player a chance to gear up before infiltrating the room (i.e. briefing phase > choose your equipment > infiltration)