Developing puzzles in Avenue Flo: Special Delivery

Interested in knowing how we created the puzzles and mini-games in Avenue Flo: Special Delivery? Read on for our exclusive behind-the-scenes blog. Warning: some spoilers may abound, so if you haven't played the game yet, try it now!

In the first Avenue Flo game, most of the mini-games are visual or spatial or logic puzzles. I’ve always loved “nerdy” puzzles like that. We wanted to keep some of those for the sequel, but also try some new things, like some light arcade gameplay, more movement on the screen, a stacking game, and a word game.

Sometimes an idea for a game mechanic comes first (like, “a stacking game that uses gravity”), and we have to find a location for it and weave it elegantly into the story. Other times, we already have a setting or story context for an activity (like “make baby food”), but need to figure out the actual mechanics of it. In all cases, we do lots of rough prototyping on paper or in Flash, and lots of testing and iterating until we’re happy with it. Here are a few anecdotes that provide a glimpse into the process...

Baby Dressup

I’m too embarrassed to say exactly how many iterations we went through on this seemingly simple puzzle. We tried it first as a “Mastermind” sort of puzzle, where the parent would just say whether they liked 1, 2, 3 or none of the items that the baby was wearing, and you had to deduce their preferences. It seemed to work on paper, but when we tested it out on the computer, it wasn’t fun. Players just randomly picked stuff until they got it right—it was too hard to logically deduce the rules. Even after changing the puzzle, the clothing items and hints went through a ridiculous number of iterations so it wasn’t too hard or too easy. Who knew dressing a baby could be such a challenge?!

Waiter Memory

This is an activity that I had been wanting for years to put into one of the Diner Dash sequels as a mini-game, but it never quite fit in. So before we even decided on a basic story for Avenue Flo 2, we knew it was going to contain this activity. I like it because remembering customers’ orders is such key challenge of waiting tables in real life, but it’s not a part of Diner Dash gameplay. Players seemed to enjoy seeing Flo “in her element”, doing something that looks familiar but feels different.

Book Sorting

We knew we wanted an activity for sorting books— something with motion to it, to make you feel like you were operating a contraption. One early concept was very similar to the conveyor belts, but with chutes that the books would fall through (see mockup below). We decided conveyor belts were more intuitive and easier to animate, so we asked our intern Brady do a rough Flash prototype to make sure it was fun. It was! The main challenge was fine tuning the level ramp—our first attempts were too fast and frustrating. Our next attempts were too slow and tedious.

Our final attempt seemed about right.

Box Activity

There are always practical considerations that impact design decisions… with a tight schedule, we needed to look at what existing activities we could smartly repurpose from the first Avenue Flo game. Players enjoyed the kitchen cabinet puzzle in that game, so we re-imagined it as the Box Activity at the Baby Craze Superstore. Below is an early mockup, and an image of the original kitchen activity. Just changing the scale, using big boxes instead of small food items, and using vertical dividers instead of horizontal shelves, gives the activity a different feel.

Word Scramble

I’ve always loved word games, and wanted to include a word scramble puzzle, but needed a place to put it. We also knew we wanted a Market scene in the game, but had no activity planned for it. So there it went. Activities like this one are easy to prototype on paper, which saves on production time. We printed out the image below, cut out the letter pieces, and had people try it out. This activity gave us the least trouble out of all of them. Nice and simple.

Baby Food Making

This one took us awhile to figure out. We knew the context of the activity (making baby food) and we wanted it to be a puzzle without arcade elements, like in Avenue Flo, but we didn’t know how it should work. We kept making it too complicated. We discussed having babies lined up in high chairs—you’d try different fruit and veggie combinations, and the babies would taste them and give you feedback (like too chunky, too green, etc.). Cute but complex. Another concept, shown below, also got scrapped because it was too complex to solve logically. We were happy with the final activity—it contains some strategy to it, but can still be solved by trial and error if a player doesn’t feel like thinking too hard.

Dog Park

This was another example of knowing the story context (interact with dogs at a dog park) before knowing the game mechanic. The first concept was a logic puzzle where you had to place dogs into different fenced in areas, based on rules of which dogs liked to play with each other, which dogs fought, etc. But it felt too static. The joy of dog parks is watching dogs run around. So we went for the more action-oriented game of throwing toys to the dogs. But we had to keep it casual—we didn’t want “aiming and shooting” to be the main challenge. So we focused on the challenge of remembering which dogs liked which toys. It’s an easy activity, but it’s still fun because the dogs are so darn cute!

Gift Stacking

Some ideas pan out better than others. The Gift Stacking activity was an experiment—we wanted an activity that used a physics engine, where you could play around with items and gravity. It’s fun to play around with, but it never quite reached the point where we were totally happy with it. Those gifts just wouldn’t behave quite right. But even so, it adds something unique to the game.

I could go on and on… every part of the game has a story associated with it. I love the design process—brainstorming, prototyping, testing, iterating, failing, banging your head against the wall, trying again, fine tuning. You never know how a concept will evolve, and once the artists and engineers get their hands on it, it magically comes out way better than you imagined. Play on!

Written by: Michelle
Games in this post: Avenue Flo: Special Delivery