Hint Button for Puzzle Game

Game Play & Game Design
#1

I’m working on a game that contains 3 puzzles. Do I need to add a hint button to the game?

Color Mix (a puzzle where you mix paint colors to get 3 balls in a row) is easy enough that it doesn’t need one.

Memory Search (a card matching game where you uncover hidden post cards) is a bit harder, but there’s really no point at which you get stuck. If people can just hit the hint button to match cards, what’s the point.

Unmix (a row/column swapping game) is the only game where a hint button would make sense. Even so, I don’t think it’s necessary. And I think the hint button for Unmix would be slow. It would involve a breadth first search of a reasonably large problem space.

On the one hand, I would think a hint button would be a standard feature. On the other, it would only be useful for Unmix, and it would be slow.

What I think would be better is if I could come up with some of kind of new special card for Memory Search or a new special color for Color Mix. I don’t want to add to the artist’s burden though. The game’s way behind already, and I recently threw a bunch of work the artist’s way.

Lucky’s Puzzle Carnival is currently in alpha testing. Visit http://www.orbitalcows.com/lpc/lpctest.php to download the alpha version either for Windows or for Mac OS X. There will also be a Linux release.

#2

This is sort of a difficult question to answer with such a small amount of information. However, I’ve tried your alpha out, and I actually thought that the color match thing was by far the most confusing game. The others were sort of common game types.

#3

I’m going to ask a few more people and see if I find someone who wants a hint button.

I can see how a hint button would be nice in a few situations, but it would be like playing a game with a walkthrough in front of you. It seems like a standard feature, but it’s not like there’s any hidden secret moves that you need the computer to show you.

Color Mix is a little unusual, but it seemed really easy to me. It might have a steeper learning curve just because of its oddness though.