What makes a puzzle worth playing every day? Developer’s take

There are thousands of free puzzle games out there. We made four of them so far, which is a very small number, but big enough to spend a lot of time thinking about one question: what makes a daily brain puzzle worth opening every single day? We already wrote about this once from the word game perspective, in this post on the Smartle blog. Today we want to do something a bit more uncomfortable: write down our checklist as developers. And in the next post we will grade our own games against it, including the places where they fall short. Stay tuned for the next post!

So here is our checklist - what we think is a must for a great daily puzzle game:

1. Fair difficulty

The puzzle should be winnable by thinking and not by luck. When you lose, you should see why it was your mistake and not bad luck. A hard puzzle might be annoying but at least you know that eventually with the right approach you can solve it. An unfair puzzle is unacceptable. If I ever see an unfair game, as a player I never come back to it.

2. Short sessions

A daily game should fit into a coffee, a break, a commute. If it demands half an hour before anything nice happens, it will not survive in a real day. I think we spend so much time on our phones today that we don’t need another game that would take hours from our days.

3. No downloads and no accounts

You open the browser, you play. I hate when I need to install or download anything, or when it requests me to accept some huge Terms and Conditions. The game should be there when you want it and gone when you close the tab.

4. Easy to start, easy to stop

Also, I love the idea that some people can play our games even during work. Of course, not every work allows this, but sometimes people just have to sit at one place for long periods of time, like a receptionist or librarian for example. They have to sit in front of the computer and it’s nice if they don’t waste that time, but can train their brain instead. I think daily games are perfect to play at work. You can open it from your work computer and easily close any time.

5. No dark patterns

In case you don’t know the term: dark patterns are small tricks that push you to play longer or pay when you didn’t plan to. Fake urgency, guilt messages, “come back or lose everything”, “buy now or never”. We think a daily puzzle game should invite you back because it is good, not because it manipulates you.

6. Respect for the player’s time

This one is basically the sum of all of the above, but also a bit more. The game should have a natural end for the day and it should be fine to miss a day. If you started a puzzle you should be able to drop it and come back any time in the day. Puzzle should not “force” you to finish it all at one go. Of course, we also want to reward players that finish games everyday or players that solve puzzles in record time or number of moves. For that we have achievements and leaderboards in most of our puzzles. But my point is that even if you don’t do anything extraordinary you still should feel happy to play every time.

Ultimately, a truly great daily game is the one that earns its place in your routine simply by being worth your time. Feel free to join our Discord server and discuss these points or bring your own to the table, we are always happy to chat.