The first time I encountered a puzzle in a video game that truly felt like a curse, I was probably twelve years old, stuck in some forgotten dungeon. But the modern manifestation of this ancient feeling—this sense of being spiritually and intellectually blocked—is what I want to talk about today. We’re unleashing the wrath of Anubis, so to speak, not by fighting mummies, but by confronting the mundane, soul-crushing puzzles that plague some of our most narrative-rich games. I recently spent about 25 hours with a game that shall remain nameless, but its puzzle design is a perfect case study. The reference material I’ve been pondering describes it perfectly: early on, you move boxes, manipulate cranes, and align lifts. It’s simple, it’s functional, and it makes sense as a tutorial for the protagonist's menial life. You’re just going through the motions, much like the character herself.
But then, something shifts. The narrative expands, the protagonist, let's call her Indika for argument's sake, begins a profound struggle with her faith, and the game’s world starts to tear apart at the seams—sometimes literally. And what are you doing during this existential crescendo? You’re shoving another box. The tonal whiplash is staggering. It’s here that the ancient curse reveals itself. It’s not a spell from a dusty tomb; it’s the curse of lazy, incongruent design. This dissonance is a modern plague. I’ve lost count of the games, perhaps 7 out of the last 10 narrative-driven titles I've played, that suffer from this. The puzzle ceases to be a mechanic and becomes a barrier, a tedious chore that pulls you out of the emotional reality the writers and artists worked so hard to build. It feels like the developers forgot to tell the puzzle designers about the second half of the script.
So, how do we overcome this? The first step is recognition. We, as players and critics, must stop accepting this as a necessary evil. For years, I just shrugged and thought, "Well, it's a video game, puzzles are part of the deal." But they don't have to be this kind of deal. The solution isn't to remove puzzles entirely, but to integrate them with the same care given to the dialogue or the soundtrack. A puzzle should be a manifestation of the character's internal conflict. When Indika is questioning her reality, the puzzle shouldn't be about aligning a physical lift; it should be about aligning fractured memories or navigating a shifting, unreliable landscape. The mechanics must serve the metaphor. I remember playing The Talos Principle and feeling my own beliefs being challenged by its philosophical puzzles. The act of solving was the act of questioning. That’s the gold standard.
Another method is to embrace environmental storytelling within the puzzle logic itself. Instead of a random crate in a sterile room, the objects you manipulate should be artifacts of the world, laden with history and meaning. The process of solving should reveal a piece of the story, not just unlock a door. I was deeply impressed by a small indie title last year, let's say it sold around 80,000 copies, where you repaired a broken music box to hear a ghost's final melody. The puzzle was the story. There was no disconnect. Contrast that with the AAA experience of moving a generator to power a console so you can… listen to an audio log. The latter feels like busywork, a checkbox on a designer’s list. The former feels like magic.
From a development perspective, this requires a more holistic, and admittedly more difficult, approach to pre-production. The narrative, design, and programming leads need to be in a constant dialogue from day one. It’s not enough for the writer to hand over a script and for the designer to slot in puzzles where they seem fit. This collaborative failure is, I believe, the root of the curse. It’s a logistical Anubis, judging the heart of the project against the feather of its intended theme. If the heart is heavy with disjointed mechanics, the project is consumed. I’ve spoken with developers who admit that puzzles are often the last thing to be fully implemented, leading to these generic, placeholder solutions becoming permanent fixtures due to time constraints. It’s a tragedy of modern production schedules.
Ultimately, overcoming this curse is about demanding more from our interactive stories. It's about valuing the player's time and emotional investment. When a game gives me the power to literally tear the world apart, but then forces me to perform a task my dog could probably figure out, it shatters the illusion. It breaks the covenant between the game and the player. We have the technology and the creativity to do better. We can have puzzles that are not just obstacles, but revelations. We can transform that feeling of mundane frustration into one of profound epiphany. The wrath of Anubis was never about punishment; it was about the weighing of the soul. Our games should do the same—weigh our intellect, our empathy, and our spirit through mechanics that matter, leaving the forgotten crates of yesterday in the tombs where they belong.
