Some interesting stuff on balancing a mix of challenges for pacing here. I think this is quite relevant for the CG/HG audiences, who seem to want their challenges to be well integrated within the narrative. There must be lots of good ways of doing it!
We’ve been looking a lot at challenges that require a specific input for a specific output - like a specific key is needed for a specific door.
Here’s another take on inputs and outputs for systemic game design, where you redirect the focus away from specific items, mechanics etc to achieve a specific output - placing a common, more general input between your challenge/puzzle and a range of specific inputs. This is promoting non-linearity in challenge solving:
@choicehacker - your lights puzzle is amazing! With the keyboard numbers instruction (which I didn’t think was posible) you’ve created the impression of a persistent session within a visual puzzle, which is completely contrary to most of our experiences of pages of text behind turn-page decisions. That’s pretty inspiring! Shame it only works for keyboards - how is that done? That seamless transition between pages would be pretty valuable functionality if it stretched across devices.
Regarding what I was thinking regarding the multiple choices on the same page, if you imagine your light puzzle, a reader could be asked to turn multiple switches on the same page (so yes, combinations - which can get a bit messy to code if your provide too many possible combinations).
When I mentioned sound in that context, I was thinking that with your game of simon sound game, rather than waiting for each page turn to press another sound in the sequence, you could put three choices on the page (where there will be 3 sounds in the sequence, the reader can make their choices, then you can play the three sounds they picked after the page turn. Just speculation about the ease of experience really! I was guessing that the problem with such a set up is that sounds must play on the following page, because there is no input until the player selects their multiple choices and then turns the page?