The Legend of Zelda series has profoundly changed video game designs worldwide. One prominent feature of the game is its reliance on puzzle-solving to navigate players through different dungeons and promote plot developments. Now, almost every action-adventure includes some form of puzzle-solving. This review will explore the four basic types of puzzles: memory, time, space, and art crafts that appear in OoT and discuss their interactions with the player and their impact on later works.
Memory-based puzzles require players to recall previously obtained information to solve the puzzle. This is arguably the type of puzzle that players feel most familiar with as well as challenging. Since memory plays such a vital role in life and nearly tasks entail the assistance of memory to be completed in real life, players could easily recognize the underlying logic of solving this type of puzzle. However, it can appear challenging because players may forget or even neglect the critical information/hint to solve the puzzle. For example, Link must defeat the brothers of a Deku Scrub in the Deku Tree dungeon in an order the Scrub implied. If the player doesn’t pay attention while the Scrub tells the hint, he might be stuck in the dungeon for a long time until he accidentally figures out the right sequence. This particular design engages players with the game by forcing them to focus on the dialogues with NPCs, however, it can sometimes become frustrating as there is no way for the player to go back to the dialogue and double-check. Now games tend to make the hints explicit so that players know when to pay the most attention. There are also in-game notebook features that automatically record the hint to help players recall the information.
Time-based puzzles limit the time allowed for the player to perform certain tasks or allow the players to adjust the time to obtain an objective. This mechanism is first introduced in Braid and has since then become a common practice. In OoT, Link has to travel between different time periods by pulling the Master Sword out of the pedestal. His weapons, items, and the map itself will all change when Link “grow” from young Link to Adult Link. In dungeons, time constraints are not shown explicitly as a moving clock, but are expressed through clicking sounds to strengthen the intensity of the puzzle-solving process. When a Deku Stick is used to light different torches, players should light up all the torches quickly so that the torch doesn’t burn out. To solve time-based puzzles, players need to practice repetitively and become proficient. This not only attracts players to spend more time on the game but also provides players with a relatively flat learning curve to improve their techniques so that designer can make dungeons more and more complex in later phases of the game.
Space-based puzzles prefer to moving an object in a space, which is different from navigating Link/player through a space. This tends to be the most complex form of puzzle, especially when some dungeons themselves function as a mega-puzzle. In the exceptional Water Temple, players must manipulate the water level to access different rooms. The act of controlling the water level can be deemed an attempt to solve the temple as one puzzle. In Genshin Impact, an adventure-action game published in 2020, similar puzzles that involve controlling water level to unlock new temples appear frequently. Designers today are attempting to align narrative structures with space-based puzzles so that players would be motivated to solve the puzzles to explore new plots and regions. One indispensable feature paired with space-based puzzles in 3D games is the map system: without a map that clearly presents players with an overview of the entire maze, players can easily get lost and hence get frustrated.
Lastly, in item-based puzzles, certain artifacts are central to the solutions. It can be as simple as a key to a door or can be as complex as the Ocarina of Time. Players are taught different songs and they need to know the correct song to play under certain circumstances. For example, the player can only obtain the horse by playing the right song at the right time. In Genshin Impact, players also use a harp to play different songs to change the landscape and travel between the dream world and reality, which clearly is an homage to the Ocarina of Time. This type of puzzle, however, is not essential to the mechanics of the game, and hence gains less attention from designers and players.
Even though I am a player who values narration over interaction and tends to become impatient when prompted to solve puzzles, I still respect the intricacies puzzles bring to games. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is an exemplary game that abounds with different types of puzzles, combines narration effectively with puzzle-solving, and leaves a deep influence on almost every later game that involves puzzle-solving.
