Designing puzzles for someone who loves logic

Hollow Ward is designed for one specific kind of player: someone who loves logic puzzles, wants a sense of completion, and does not want to be frustrated by a game that hides its clues in pixels. Every puzzle decision is checked against that person.

Rules every puzzle follows

• Two ways to solve it: one explicit clue, like a note, and one environmental clue, like a marked chart or a detail on an item.
• No pixel hunting. A clue is found by looking carefully or by inspecting something you already own, never by scanning every surface.
• The journal records everything, so there is nothing to memorise or write down.
• A quiet hint system. After a stretch without progress, the objective text gains a hint. There are no pop-ups.
• Backtracking can be risky but is never a dead end. No clue or item can be missed permanently.

A language the player learns

About 18 symbols appear on walls, panels and doors. At first the player only sees them. Notes and drawings then pair them with meanings, and each one learned is added to the journal’s dictionary. Everyday meanings come first, such as door, power and danger. The logic-rule meanings, such as equal, different and total, are taught before the first fuse panel needs them.

Later puzzles use the symbols alone, so reading the language and solving the logic become the same task. The counter, “decoded 14 of 18”, is the completion feeling the player was promised.

The signature puzzle

The fuse panels are a logic puzzle in the style of a domino grid. The panel is divided into regions, each showing a rule such as all equal, all different, or a sum. The player places two-ended fuses until every region is satisfied and every piece is used. The design calls for each panel to have exactly one solution, with a hint that places one correct piece.

A worked example: which keycard opens the door

The ward door wants a keycard, and three are lying around. The clues are on paper: a shift handover note, a duty roster on the wall, and three sticky notes saying where each card was left. Reading them tells you whose access still works. Then you have to go and find that card, and it is in the room the crawler runs into, so you have to go in.

Swiping a wrong card buzzes loudly, which is a twelve-metre noise in the game’s sound system, and locks the reader for four seconds. The puzzle is solvable by reading, but a careless guess has a cost the rest of the game understands.