Unlocking Players' Inner Geniuses

Great puzzles aren’t roadblocks. They don’t exist to frustrate or stall players out. A well-crafted puzzle does something else entirely—it pulls them in, makes them lean closer to the screen, whispering to themselves: Wait… what if I… oh, damn. That’s it. That moment, that hit of earned triumph, is the pulse of great puzzle design.

A puzzle should never be a brick wall. It should be a door—one locked tight but with just enough light slipping through the cracks to tease at what’s inside. The player’s job? Figure out the key. Your job as a designer? Make damn sure they have everything they need to turn it in the lock.

Playing Fair: The Tools Are Already There

When I worked on Ghost Recon, I wanted puzzles that didn’t just slow the game down but pulled players deeper into the world. Two stand out—A New Perspective and Song for a Revolution. These weren’t tacked-on riddles or lazy “find the thing” objectives. They mattered. They fit. They meant something. And most importantly—they played fair.

Take A New Perspective. This wasn’t about brute-forcing a solution or mindlessly scanning for a glowing objective marker. The answer was already there, hiding in plain sight—if you knew how to look. A shift in vantage point, a detail that seemed insignificant until it suddenly wasn’t. Shadows aligning in just the right way. A structure that wasn’t just a structure but a cipher, waiting to be unraveled. The best puzzles don’t mislead or deceive; they challenge perception itself. The solution was never out of reach—you just had to change the way you saw the world.

The same goes for Song for a Revolution, which wasn’t just a puzzle—it was a piece of history wrapped in mechanics. You weren’t just finding the solution. You were unearthing it. Understanding it. Feeling the weight of it. That’s the difference between a puzzle that exists for its own sake and one that makes the world feel alive.

Lessons from the Greats: Challenge, Not Confusion

The best puzzle games understand that clarity isn’t the enemy of challenge—it’s the foundation of it. Portal hands you a gun that bends physics in half, then spends the next few hours teaching you how to use it. The puzzles escalate, but the core remains the same. Every locked door has a way through—you just need to see it.

The Witness? Same deal. It feeds you mechanics in increments, layering complexity until what once seemed impossible feels like second nature. That’s what good puzzle design does—it doesn’t beat you over the head with arbitrary difficulty. It teaches, then challenges, then rewards.

Puzzles Should Matter

A puzzle should never exist in isolation. It should breathe with the world, pulse with its history, and demand attention—not because it's frustrating, but because it matters. Because solving it isn’t just about progress—it’s about discovery.

In Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, A New Perspective wasn’t just a trick of angles and observation—it was a test of awareness, a lesson in seeing beyond the obvious. The world itself held the answer, waiting for players to shift their perception and uncover the hidden truth. Song for a Revolution wasn’t some rote scavenger hunt—it was a battle cry etched into history, a puzzle built from the echoes of defiance and resistance.

The best puzzles don’t just make players feel smart. They make them feel. Connected to the world. Entwined with the story. Grasping, for just a moment, something far greater than themselves.

The True Reward

A great puzzle doesn’t congratulate you with a chime and a checkmark. It rewards you with understanding. A deeper grasp of the world. A moment of narrative clarity. A realization that the answer was always there—you just had to see it.

So, if you’re designing puzzles, do it with purpose. Don’t just throw a lock on a door and call it design. Give players the key—then make them desperate to figure out how to use it.

That’s how you make them feel clever. That’s how you make them care.