Puzzle games have always been one of the world’s favourite types of games, and this looks unlikely to change at any point in the near future. If you are keen to make sure that you are enjoying these as much as possible, part of that will probably be trying to ensure that you are getting better at them. As it happens, to improve your ability with puzzle games is something that you can do from a number of angles, in a variety of different ways, and it’s likely that you are going to be able to make this work for yourself in one way or another.
To help you out, we have here put together some of the best things you can do to ensure that you are improving your ability with puzzle games. If you try out all of the following, you should find that you are going to have a much better experience with puzzles, and that you enjoy them all the more as well.
Understand The Rules Deeply
Most puzzle games teach you the mechanics early, but many players rush through tutorials and miss important nuances. The difference between struggling and excelling often comes down to how well you understand what the game actually allows and forbids. Spend time experimenting with the rules rather than just reacting to them. Try moves that seem pointless. Push mechanics to their limits. When you truly grasp the system, solutions start to feel discoverable rather than mysterious.
Slow Your Thinking Down
People often think they need to speed up when they are attacking the puzzle, but just the opposite is true. Puzzle games punish haste more than they reward speed. It’s tempting to keep making moves just to “try something,” but random action usually digs a deeper hole. Strong puzzle solvers pause, observe the full state of the problem, and mentally test ideas before committing. Even taking ten seconds to scan the board or replay the problem in your head can reveal patterns you missed while rushing.
If you manage to make the psychological shift required to do this, you will soon find that you are going to have a much better ability to work with your puzzles, whether you are playing minesweeper or doing a sudoku. It really will help a great deal, and it will be all the more enjoyable as well.
Practise In Recognising Patterns
No matter which puzzle you are playing, usually there is going to be some kind of need to recognise patterns. This is something that you can practise in at so many times, and in so many different contexts, so it’s always going to be possible to do this, and that will mean that it translates well across to when you are playing puzzles as well. Of course, the puzzles themselves are great for this, but you might also be able to find a lot of opportunities at other times to practice this kind of way of thinking too.
Most puzzle games reuse ideas in slightly different forms. Once you’ve solved a certain type of problem, you’re likely to see a cousin of it later on. Improving means building a mental library of patterns: common traps, typical setups, and familiar solution paths. When you get stuck, ask yourself whether the puzzle resembles something you’ve already solved, even if it looks more complicated on the surface.
Change Your Approach To Failure
For many of us, failing to solve a puzzle is taken at face value – as a failure – rather than simply evidence that something needs to change, or that there is something to be learned there. But the truth is that if you can improve the way that you think about failure, you are going to find it actually becomes a much simpler and easier thing to approach. And actually, in general failure is best seen as simply data or information about the puzzle, rather than meaning something about yourself.
Getting stuck isn’t wasted time. Every failed attempt teaches you something about what doesn’t work, what causes irreversible states, or which assumptions are wrong. Instead of resetting in frustration, take a moment to ask why the attempt failed. Over time, this habit sharpens your intuition and helps you avoid repeating the same mistakes across different games.
Know When To Step Away
This is actually part of the process of learning, too. If you are able to step away strategically, there is something in that which generally enables you to learn much more about the puzzles themselves, and it’s amazing how much you are going to be able to learn this way. If you are struggling too much, and it simply isn’t fun anymore, then you might want to think about stepping away and seeing how that might help. You will usually gain a fresh perspective which allows you to approach the problems of the puzzle afresh, and it really is amazing how much this is going to help you out.
Practice Different Styles
There are lots of different styles of puzzles, and they all work a little differently. If you spend time with as many different types as possible, that is going to help ensure that you have a much better ability with them in general, so this is something that you are going to want to think about for sure. Try out as many different types of puzzles as you can, and the result will be that you develop a much stronger overall ability and sense. This can often feel like intuition, and it’s amazing what it can do for your abilities overall.
Those are just some of the things that you might want to think about if you are going to try and improve your ability with puzzle games. You should find that this helps you to have a much better enjoyment of them too, which is rather the whole point.
