Page-Number Puzzles

Gamebooks typically tell which pages or sections you may turn to. This is standard, and is the whole premise for Choose Your Own Adventure.

However, some gamebooks include page-number puzzles. These puzzles allow players to proceed to a next section by solving a puzzle, whose answer is the section number.

These puzzles can serve two main purposes:

1. They ensure players only procede after meeting some story requirement, such as obtaining an item or speaking to some character.

This sort of puzzle is found in such gamebooks as the Fighting Fantasy series.

2. They add a puzzle element for its own sake.

These puzzles are features in gamebooks such as Sorcery! and my own gamebooks, the Zaltec duology.

Here are some important things to keep in mind when creating such puzzles:

1. Make sure there is only one correct answer.

Consider the following theoretical puzzle in a gamebook:

"x+y=7. Go to page x*y."

The designer might mean the answer is page 12 (with x=3, y=4). But players might end up on page 5*2, or 6*1, or -170 (with x=17, y=-10).

It's very easy to make this mistake. Gamebooks do not have an "external referee" such as a Game Master or videogame code to make sure players don't end up on the wrong page.

Make sure to have people play-test your puzzles!

2. Make it obvious to the readers that they are meant to turn to the numbered page of section.

If they solve a riddle and end up with "42", they might not understand that they need to that section. There are various ways to make it clear, such as adding text; setting precedence earlier in thrle book; or making it visually obvious, such as by presenting the puzzle on a locked door.

3. Make it clear to the readers that the correct answer is the correct one, and an incorrect answer is incorrect.

Since there is no referee there to let the readers know whether they solved the puzzle correctly, the correctness of puzzles should be self-evident.

For this reason, plain old math problems are problematic (tee hee!). A reader might get the answer wrong and not realize it.

Some ways to deal with this:

- Use non-whole numbers, with the solutiom being whole (so if readers end up with 23.189994, they'll realize they got it wrong).

- Use puzzles whose answers produce text!

A cipher which translates to "GO TO PAGE TWENTY" will be clearly correct to the readers.

4. Have people playtest in order to gauge difficulty.

It's very hard to estimate how hard a puzzle is, when you already know the solution.

5. A good puzzle should make readers feel smart.

I wish I knew a method to accomplish this. I can only bring this up as something to strive for and to attempt to measure puzzles by.