Just a heads up for those of you who may have missed it:

Tuning Puzzle Games for Non-Puzzle Gamers (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030806/adams_01.shtml)

Very interesting article. I'll be adding Undo/Redo support for PegSweeper this very night :)

Interesting article indeed. Since he spent most of the article using a couple of solitaire card games as examples, it definitely would have helped the article if the author had done a little research about the standards in solitaire game software.

The game he called "4 Towers" is actually Sea Towers (or SeaHaven Towers). The game was invented by Art Cabral who did a version for the Mac. It's an excellent variation of FreeCell.

Undo/redo is very important, as the author notes. But very few solitaire games these days limit you to one undo. It used to be that all solitaire game programs limited you to one undo like the Windows FreeCell game, but in 1995 a game called Pretty Good Solitaire came along that allowed unlimited undo and now virtually all solitaire game programs allow this.

He's right about how reversibility improves the game, he just need to download a current solitaire game like Pretty Good Solitaire and play a FreeCell game with full undo and redo. Maybe he'll like FreeCell better.

He's also right about the necessity of save points. Since the very first version Pretty Good Solitaire automatically saved your position when you left the game so that you could continue play when you return to the game.

It was these very two features, undo/redo and automatic saving, that didn't exist in any major solitaire games at the time, that made Pretty Good Solitaire stand out at the beginning (before it had lots of games) and led to its initial popularity. Little things like this were what attracted people to it.

I imagine there are other puzzle genres where these things aren't done currently and where there is opportunity for someone to make a game that beats the others in the little things that matter.

I don't think I agree with Scott Kim's assertion that undo/redo functionality might be too "tech-y". I've always considered undo/redo functionality to be pretty novice-friendly if done right. Of course, I don't consider myself a "puzzle master", self-proclaimed or otherwise, so maybe I'm wrong. :) It seems clear where Thomas stands on this issue (and given his experiences I'm inclined to share his position), but does anyone else have any thoughts on the suitability of undo for non-tech types?

Wow! goodsol, that was the most plugs i've seen in a post in a long time :p

In all seriousness though, the articles was pretty good, but I wish they used the analogy with more than just solitaire games. Tuning other types of puzzle games is not that similar to solitaire (as I'm finding out the hard way). Good information though.

~Bruno

Hm, that makes me wonder...

I've decided to remove the undo in the demo version of my board game. Undo is indeed quite useful when you play too fast and loose stupidly against the computer; so I thought it'd be a good incentive to buy the full version.

I just hope that "non-look-ahead" players won't dislike too much the demo because of that :-}

i don't really think the article was good, he list 2 points, which can seem half-obvious. I expected a more detailed article i guess. :P

Smurftra