postmortem

This is a retrospective one month after release. Actually, that might be too soon to call this a postmortem... eh, anyway I'm just here to talk about Gridspech.

Design reservations

I'm very proud of this project, but there are two issues I never really resolved.

1. Level system

Gridspech relies on linear level progression to properly introduce, teach, and build on mechanics. Here's my concern from a 2022 post in the Thinky Puzzle Games discord:

One issue on my mind is how much time the player needs to spend with the first 2 mechanics. The first 4 "worlds" are all about them. Now they are the most foundational - not getting them would ruin the later mechanics. But in a "game about grids and symbols," I think players might be disheartened to see just two symbols for that much time.

Similarly, one playtester (whose puzzle work I deeply respect) remarked that section H had the most interesting and unique mechanic, and he wished it was introduced earlier. That mechanic definitely seemed to stand out for quite a few players.

I also really wanted to make a more open-ended and less linear layout, where if, say, you got stuck, you could go to some other mechanic's section.

Unfortunately, designing a new layout and rearranging the order mechanics are introduced... was too difficult.

The biggest problem is that currently, each set builds on the last one. Consider The Witness or Taiji - if you're stuck, you can explore somewhere else - and this is only possible because each part of the world is largely standalone. Gridspech can't really pull that off because most puzzles include multiple mechanics, and trying to isolate mechanics into "regions" would have really weird consequences. When you remove that prior knowledge, it's much harder to teach and play with ideas.

With more time, maybe I could have found a solution, but I've made my peace.

2. Mixed messages

This is something I touched on in an earlier post: Puzzle design thoughts - give "Deduction vs fiddling" a quick read before you keep going here.

Honestly, I really love the 'deductive anchor' approach. When it works right, I think it feels great. But the thing is, a lot of the earlier puzzles are more on the fiddly side, and it could condition players to assume that fiddling to start is the way to go, rather than stopping and considering what they can deduce. When a player reaches a tougher puzzle, they may be primed to think, "This is just a puzzle you have to brute force" rather than, "The starting point is tricky to find but it's somewhere in here" - causing unintended frustration, since the level is just way too open-ended for trial and error.

Player responses

It's been a lot of fun reading comments and watching a few gameplay videos. Gridspech certainly isn't big, but thanks to a few game blogs, I got more visibility than I expected.

There are a lot of real, unfiltered opinions in those comment sections. What really shocked me was the big volume of players who bounced off of the first section - not out of disinterest, but because they straight up didn't understand the first rule. Now, I was actually trying to make a distinctly accessible witnesslike (again, read "Puzzle design thoughts")... but in reality, a lot of players couldn't progress very far and criticized or dismissed the game as obtuse!

So I've continually made tweaks to make the game more approachable, but I think a lot of this can also be attributed to witnesslikes just... being a really niche subgenre in the first place. So to some extent, I just have to take this in stride.

And that's been an interesting thing to work through, in terms of game designer mindset. When taking criticism, I need to be confident enough in my direction to declare, "This game isn't for everyone," without dismissing valid criticisms with, "You just don't get it." For me, I've come to acquiesce to the current ratio of accessible-vs-niche because other players do still "get it" and actually do enjoy the game! Positive comments have been extremely validating and helped me be content with the experience the game currently delivers.

Shoutouts

I'm incredibly indebted to my pal Dean, who wrote a whole solver - just for fun! I used to be inundated with player reports of novel solutions before it, which was very embarrassing and also just time-consuming for me to tweak levels. I can't stress enough how much time he saved me.

Various users from the Thinky Puzzle Games discord and Taiji discord were kind to playtest early versions of the game when it was a lot shoddier. TPG discord is an excellent puzzle game community, especially for anyone designing one themselves. Lots of really smart people, including developers of well-received commercial puzzle games.