Ask not what your Game can Offer You: Building your Own Puzzles in PQ2

By Katie . August 12, 2007 . 3:19pm

Correct me if I'm wrong, but PQ2 – title shortened from Practical Intelligence Quotient 2, for those who couldn't pass a certain other quotient test – may be the best damn thing to come out of the brain-training craze. While the line between general, find-the-gamer-in-everyone software and good ol' fashioned video games continues to contort and spasm under the hefty likes of Cooking Mama and Big Brain Academy, PQ2 manages to retain the qualities of a grassroots, start-to-goal puzzle video game while offering a serious cerebral workout. (I'd argue those are two sides of the same coin and brain-training 'game' is a misnomer, but I digress.) Don't any IQ test flunkies take offense, by the way – although I hate acronyms, I call it PQ2 to everyone, whether they know what the hell I'm on about or not.

And not everyone does. The PSP game, released in January, has only attracted as small and devoted an audience as a real game can, compared to its competition at least. Maybe you don't see its sales figures plastered on any top-of-the-month lists like you do Brain Age, but if my calculations are correct, there have been 2910 or so player-made puzzles contributed to the PQ2 network. That's a lot of echoed sentiment as to how good a map editor is offered in PQ2, one which allows for those with a lower PQ (maybe mine) to explore an alternative to busting a neuron working the switches and buttons and boxes of some geek's 'roided-up brainchild.

That brings us to what I'm actually supposed to cover here – i.e., What makes a good puzzle in PQ2? After checking out the definitive 100-Question Test and a few of the Themed ones for inspiration, first stop for any fame-seeking designer is the Weekly Test, comprised of the most-voted-upon user puzzles of the week (or something like that, a detail I could only surmise would be expounded in my absent manual… don't worry Spencer, I'm not sore). Notice the way these users have set stringent limits on moves and time in their perfect run-throughs of their own works. Aim for that, because you may find as I did that your puzzle has a loophole when some clever exploiter gets a 348% completion rate on it, and you don't want to look that foolish.

The neatest thing I think I did right in my puzzle, nicknamed 'BigTease', was put unassuming objects to unsuspected uses. Two stacked laser switches, for example, are activated right off the bat by unreachable laser boxes. In between laser and switch lies a hydraulic platform of each switch color that will block (and let through) the lasers in turn, because the nearest one has a glass box on it. This means that you have to deal not with removing the cause or effect from the relationship, but BLOCK it via a third obstacle. I know my explanation sucks, so in short, it's like a perpetual motion machine, and I hoped it would throw someone off… in fact, let alone explain it, I wonder if I could BEAT my own puzzle again…

Another object put to unusual, enjoyable use in other people's puzzles is the closing gates. As they ride along their rails, you can, of course, have your avatar ride along on top of them. Success tends to be a matter of timing in puzzles like these, and usually a delicate matter, if the creator had a solid vision. This lends it more the feel of an action game, but beware – reflexive actions are often an easier challenge for true gamers.

Probably the most difficult and most spectacular puzzles I've encountered make use of glass crates and glass boxes in mass quantities. What they require is that you clear a path to the exit
in very few moves, by breaking certain boxes and not others. There's something too cool about setting off a giant chain-reaction with minimal effort, so the better examples of these puzzles require you to seriously consider the starting point for said reaction. They're quick, they're hard, and they're versatile in the way they often force you to use the glass components as agents of either destruction or construction.

Just remember that you have 257 slots open to save your efforts (that's the reasoning of 1-256, plus a zeroeth element, for you cool programmer folk), and the costs of the various implements are low enough that you'll never run out of map funds before your masterwork reaches completion. If you don't like your creation later, trash it and try again – the intelligence world is your oyster in PQ2. Now I hope maybe you've learned a little more about the panoply of options in PQ, and by jove, I'm going to finish my own puzzle.

D3 Publisher Oneicyanbara SPECIAL for PSP [Japan Import]

D3 Publisher STORM LOVER Ntsukoi for PSP [Japan Import]