Puzzles play a huge role in video games as although they are very simple to make, it does require the player to think logically about how to solve them and that could lead to the player gaining access to an area that they weren't able to explore before in terms of story progression and these puzzles come in many forms, they can be puzzles were you need to slide pieces into places in order for you to reach the end point and there are puzzles were you need to rotate objects in order for them to fit into a slot which can lead to a secret passage that's now open to you now after you complete the puzzle.
Though there are puzzles that rely on the context of riddles given by NPCs that the player might encounter along the players journey, these require 3 specific elements to make up an investigational puzzle, first there's the subject of the puzzle, the facts that are given about the subject and the clues that are given to assist you to figure which of the facts belong to the subject which will then help you solve the puzzle.
When designing a puzzle, the clues are the vital aspect of the puzzle but there are other aspects to think about as well which add some variety which will enhance the puzzles that are created, firstly how will the player receive the clues, how often should they receive them should they be given a lot or in tiny increments, then who should be giving the clues just a random NPC or a character that will add to the narrative of the story, what form should the clues be given in should they be written, spoken or observed narratively and can we we trust the source of the clues is the source untrustworthy and will they betray the character?
Also some other questions to consider as well, will the players be able to record the deductions that they make or make the player keep track of all of the findings that they see, how can the player act on their findings that they discovered as there needs to be a use behind the clues that the player finds whilst trying to solve the puzzle and would there be any penalties for the player guessing, for example they might be correct in terms of the actual answer by just guessing but they have no evidence to back up how they managed to get the solution.
So I had a go at creating my own puzzle which is completely separate to my game but more of a practice puzzle just to see if I want to incorporate a narrative type puzzle or a different type of narrative puzzle that isn't entirely constructed by the same way a narrative puzzle should be made but serve the same purpose like for example, I could create a sequence based puzzle but when the player solves the puzzle, it could lead to a narrative aspect so that it can serve a purpose rather than just a puzzle for just being there for the sake of things or don't add to the story aspect of my game.
So I created a scenario based off the housemates that I live with in university accommodation (well before we all had to go home), first I created the subjects who are the people I live with, then I created the facts of the people which need to match up to the corresponding people and then below the table are the clues needed to help figure out which of the facts correspond to the correct people.
Down below is the solution to the puzzle;
Overall, creating the puzzle was simple in itself, but trying to make the clues was actually quite tricky to organise and write as I didn’t want the clues to be to obvious but I didn’t want the clues to be difficult for people to understand but other than that it was really fun to create the puzzle.
How I would apply this type of workshop to my own game is to think about how to integrate the clues to a narrative aspect though from what I discussed earlier I might not do it exactly the same as how a normal narrative puzzle would function but in a very similar way that will still add a sense of story for example I would use some of these techniques to create a sequence based puzzle but will use clues that could be a visual observation and when the character solves the puzzle, it will progress the story of the game (possibly could work through a cutscene scenario maybe?).
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