In our second vaguely off-topic post of the day, I wanted to make sure all of you had a chance to check out this blog on a game design class with a lot of interesting information about the art and science of game design. There seems to be a lot of helpful information there, especially some of the later classes, including several posts on game testing in different environments and under different play patterns.

While we mostly focus on free games that our readers can play, I thought it would be worthwhile to link to some resources for readers who may want to take the next step from consumer to creator. There are a lot of skills that come into play for indie game development, including game design, art, programming and marketing. The latter can be one of the most tricky, but if you shoot us an email at hello@playfreegamenow.com, we will absolutely review your game and include a link to what you’ve created.

Hope you enjoy the posts above! If you want more, you should definitely also check out some fascinating thoughts on Facebook games here.

Sounds like a simple question, right? One could easily think of a meaning in terms of a circular definition: a game in which puzzles are solved. But doesn’t that definition fit many games out there, especially free flash ones? Is Closure, a game we profiled earlier, a platformer or a puzzle game? In a sense, it’s a little of both — but ultimately, it’s more a game of solving puzzles than jumping around various moving platforms. And it’s better because of it.

To get a sense of what I’m talking about, just check out the Puzzle game listings on Kongregate:

Listing of Puzzle Games on Kongregate

But many of the games listed above don’t fit into the traditional definition of a “puzzle” game. There are only “Logical or conceptual challenges”, a common term used in reference to puzzle games, to the extent that you find those challenges in almost any type of game. Halo 3, for instance, has a number of logical challenges — but it certainly isn’t commonly defined as a puzzle game, as there are already well-defined genres that are used to label it — action, shoot-em-up, et cetera.

So thus, the “Puzzle” genre gets co-opted for those fascinating, esoteric games — often free flash games — that don’t really fit into any other genre. For another example, see Obechi, a game we covered last week. There’s no more of a “logical or conceptual challenge” in Obechi than in Halo or Madden, but there’s no other commonly-adopted genre that can be used to define and tag a game centered around collecting balls with rings in an abstract, 2D space.