GDC 2025 Session Viewer
Designing 10,000 Handcrafted Puzzles for 'Islands of Insight'
Elyot Grant (Founder/CEO, Lunarch Studios Inc.)
Location: Room 3011, West Hall
Date: Wednesday, March 19
Time: 9:00 am - 10:00 am
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass - Get your pass now!
Track: Design
Format: Lecture
Vault Recording: TBD
Audience Level: All
Islands of Insight was a puzzle MMO released by Lunarch Studios and Behaviour Interactive in February 2024. With over 10,000 handmade puzzles, it was one of the biggest puzzle games ever made.
This talk is a design post-mortem by the director of Islands of Insight. It will cover many of the key learnings from the game's development, on topics such as prototyping new puzzle types, structuring content to avoid sticking points, enhancing accessibility through UI and tutorial design, and balancing puzzle-heavy content for flow and pacing.
It will also detail some of the successful innovations in puzzle creation that were beloved by fans of the game, as well as some of the lessons learned from puzzle types that were never shipped or were less well-received.
Takeaway
Attendees will learn many hard-fought lessons about building puzzles for a game with large appeal. They will learn what is necessary to design for a broad audience (from absolute novices all the way to die-hard puzzle fans).
Intended Audience
A puzzle is anything that challenges players to think, "how do I do X?" This talk targets all disciplines who contribute to creating those challenges (particularly designers, but also producers, directors, artists, etc.). Its lessons are applicable across many genres (adventure, strategy, RPGs, etc.) and product categories (casual to AAA).