The goal? To share research, showcase games, and discuss the future of game studies through the lens of BIPOC experiences (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color).
Here is a bullet point list of themes the conference was designed to explore:
Representation and Identity in Video Games
Digital & Analog Games as Cultural Artifact
Games By & About Black and Indigenous Communities
Decolonizing Game Development & Design
Integration of Indigenous & Black Knowledge Systems
Afrofuturism in Gaming
Cultural Preservation & Digital Heritage
Social Impact & Activism Through Games
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Playful Technologies
Both board games and video games were topics of discussion across the three-day event, with panels and presentations covering properties as varied as Yu-Gi-Oh!, collegiate Esports, The Last of Us, murder mystery games, Dragon Age, virtual reality, the cultural value of arcades, and more.
“I think one of the most important things to recognize about games is that they are kind of a cultural artifact. And being a cultural artifact, it’s important to ask questions about what these things mean in society, or what these things mean to the people who make them.”
“… One of the things I think is really interesting in game studies is we have the opportunity to think critically about the kinds of problems we’re solving and then also the kinds of solutions we’re offering. So a lot of what people talk about in, say, decolonizing games is about reinvestigating those two questions, what’s the real problem here? What’s the source of that problem? Similarly, how are we solving the problem?”
For years, I have discussed in this blog how the world of puzzles and games not only reflects our culture and choices, but why that’s important. But I can only examine those things through one particular lens, that of a white cishet male. There are blindspots I’m unaware of and experiences I simply don’t have, despite my best efforts.
That’s why it’s so important to have other voices included in the discussion, and events like this are crucial to the health of the games industry and our understanding of why we play games at all.
How the experiences of Black users suffer in virtual reality due to whiteness as a default in so many games.
How the roles of Black and Latinx characters in games like Overwatch and Marvel Rivals contribute to not just representation, but reinforce perceptions of particular ethnic groups only in violent situations, not those of support or providing nonviolent solutions.
How video games are being used to preserve Latinx culture and the artistic legacy of the Hmong.
I learned about topics like Quare Theory and Misogynoir (how racist and anti-Black depictions affect the public perception of Black women), explained through the medium of video games.
But the article I found myself returning to several times over the last few days was “Decolonizing Play: Exploring Frameworks for Game Design Free of Colonial Values.”
It was startling to realize just how many video games are foundationally built on the values of Colonialism, and how easy it would be to NOT reinforce those harmful cyclical patterns.
From the paper by Elaine Gomez: When the topic of colonization arises, many game developers often hesitate to get involved in meaningful and constructive design conversations around how to mitigate values that are heavily ingrained in game theory and player expectations.
Some of the conversations broached by these panels and papers are uncomfortable, but difficult conversations are worth having. Challenging the biases and preconceived notions that games are often built upon is worthwhile. (I’m hoping to reach out to some of the Conference’s participants for more details in the coming weeks to follow up on these enlightening discussions.)
In the meantime, I encourage everyone to read the proceedings from the event and take some time to really ponder the topics presented.
The world of puzzles and games is big enough for everyone, and only gets better when everyone feels included. The 2025 Conference on BIPOC Game Studies is proof of that.
Rochester, New York is the home of The Strong National Museum of Play, and they have a very important mission: to chronicle the history and importance of play.
Child development, social interaction, imagination… all of these key features in a healthy individual are facilitated by play, and the staff at The Strong help us not only understand that process, but celebrates it by hosting both the National Toy Hall of Fame and the World Video Game Hall of Fame under its brightly-colored umbrella.
As you might have guessed, puzzles and games play a significant role in The Strong’s work, and they’re represented in both Halls of Fame. Clue, Chess, Scrabble, the Rubik’s Cube, and Dungeons & Dragons are all inductees in the National Toy Hall of Fame, while Myst, Tetris, The Oregon Trail, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? are among the puzzlier inductees on the video game side of things.
This year’s finalists for the 2025 class run the gamut from 8-bit classes, modern phenomenon, and games that took play to surprising new places, and they represent different genres, play styles, and aspects of gaming across decades.
The 2025 finalists are: Age of Empires, Angry Birds, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Defender, Frogger, Golden Eye, Golden Tee, Harvest Moon, Mattel Football, Quake, NBA 2K and Tamagotchi.
What a field! Everywhere from arcades (Frogger) to pocket games (Tamagotchi) are on display here, as well as social gaming both in person (Golden Eye) and online (Quake).
The nominees were chosen from thousands of nominations online. The field was then narrowed by staff members at The Strong based on “longevity, geographical reach, and influence on game design and pop culture.” Only a small handful of these finalists will be selected by an international committee of experts as this year’s inductees.
Everyone has an award show that they geek out over, and you’re probably not surprised to discover that these Halls of Fame are two of my favorite awards given out each year. I love seeing deserving games and puzzles get the spotlight they deserve for helping change how we play and interact with each other.
Five years ago, I wrote my first (and until then, only) post about horror movies in this blog. It was part of a series of posts about the best puzzle solvers across various genres, media properties, and franchises. And I really liked that post.
However, at the time, I felt like I had to avoid certain film franchises and subjects to keep the post as family friendly as possible.
But PuzzCulture is a different animal from its predecessor, so let’s push the boundaries a little bit and make the most comprehensive and accurate list possible, shall we? Let’s honor Halloween right by celebrating the sharpest and most cunning characters to ever elude those relentless meat grinders known as horror films and horror video games.
These are the characters you want on your side, because they’re clever, decisive, and immensely capable. After all, most horror movies and games are populated with idiots who are destined to perish before the film’s conclusion.
So instead, these are the characters who break the mold.
When you’re confronted with a monster who hunts people through their dreams, you have to be pretty clever to survive. After all, you have to sleep at some point. When it comes to the Elm Street franchise, they don’t come more clever than young Nancy Thompson.
Nancy discovers she has the ability to pull things from the dreamworld into the real world, and plans to use this ability to stop Freddy Krueger once and for all. She not only sets an alarm to ensure she wakes up before falling victim to Freddy in the dreamworld, but sets numerous booby traps in her house to ensnare and hurt Freddy.
Nancy is a top-notch puzzler for not only figuring out how to use her incredible ability to her advantage, but devising a plan (and a backup plan!) to save herself.
One of my all-time favorite video games, Limbo is a moody, atmospheric puzzle horror game where our silent protagonist ventures through dangerous mechanical traps and shadowy creatures in search of his missing sister.
Easily one of the most clever puzzle platform games of the last twenty years, Limbo allows players to climb, push and pull objects, and manipulate the environment to allow the boy to continue his search. Trial and error is the name of the game here, but it takes some serious puzzle-solving skills to survive to the end.
The Lament Configuration is a Rubik’s Cube-like puzzle box that opens a portal to another dimension, where monstrous beings called Cenobites promise untold delights in exchange for your soul. Unfortunately, Kirsty is a clever enough puzzler to solve the Lament Configuration and open the portal.
Thankfully, Kirsty is also clever enough to outmaneuver the Cenobites, buying herself time by realizing someone has escaped their clutches and working to save herself by finding the fugitive.
So Kirsty not only figures out the rules of monsters from another dimension and how to use them, but solves a difficult puzzle box (first opening it, then solving it in reverse to close it) in order to save herself. A pretty sharp cookie, to be sure.
A young FBI trainee who finds herself tangling with two serial killers — one on the loose, another in custody — Clarice Starling has to not only save a young woman kidnapped by Buffalo Bill, but do so while unraveling the word games and riddles of the devious and brilliant Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
Clarice is perhaps the most overtly puzzly of our heroes, solving anagrams and figuring out the double meaning behind many of Dr. Lecter’s riddles and clues in order to get closer to stopping Buffalo Bill. Along the way, she uncovers information missed by more seasoned investigators, even managing to survive an attack by Buffalo Bill (in the dark!) and saving the kidnapped girl in the process.
If you’re ever in danger, hope that Clarice Starling is on the trail.
Mike and Sam, Until Dawn
In the interactive horror game Until Dawn, a group of high school pals return to a cabin on a snowy mountain to honor the disappearance of two friends a year earlier. Unfortunately, more tragedy awaits them as a maniac stalks the mountain and evil lurks behind every choice the players make.
Several characters get heroic moments in the game, but nobody more so than Sam and Mike, who manage to wordlessly communicate a plan to stop the dark forces hunting them. (A plan that iron-willed players can help execute, saving Mike and Sam and any other characters that managed to make it to dawn.)
In a game where both characters and players can make clever or clumsy decisions, Sam and Mike definitely stand head and shoulders above the rest.
Imagine that you’re being hunted by a monster that lurks in the dark. It seems like an obvious solution to simply stay in the light, but when that monster is both intelligent and cunning, that’s a taller order than you think. Bret, along with his girlfriend Rebecca and Rebecca’s family, are being pursued by Diana, a creature who can only appear when it’s dark.
When Diana cuts power to the entire neighborhood, everyone must scramble for safety. Thankfully, the resourceful Bret is on their side, and he thwarts Diana’s attacks several times. When she knocks the flashlight from his hands and charges him, he banishes her momentarily with the brightness of his smartphone screen. As he runs for a car outside, she ambushes him from a shadow, but he escapes again by using the key fob in his pocket to activate the car’s headlights.
Effective puzzlers always make the most of the tools at their disposal, and Bret is a most effective puzzler.
We meet many criminal investigators in the Saw franchise, but arguably none are more capable than Agent Peter Strahm. Strahm not only deduces important information about Jigsaw’s apprentice in Saw IV, but he actually outwits one of the apprentice’s traps in Saw V!
Using the same pen he would nervously click to relieve stress, Strahm manages to outlast the Water Trap, where his head was trapped in a cube that quickly filled with water. (I won’t go into detail, but anyone who has watched House, M*A*S*H, or Nobody can probably figure out how.)
Although Strahm doesn’t get to walk off into the sunset (very few do in Saw movies), he proved far more capable than many who chose to tangle with Jigsaw and his apprentices.
Sometimes, a good puzzler is plunked down in an unfamiliar situation and has to make sense of it all. (This is the premise of many an escape room or a video game, as well as the truth regarding many coded puzzles or puzzles with symbols.) The situation in Cube is like that times a thousand.
Leaven is one of six people trapped in a maze of interconnected cubical rooms, many of them booby-trapped in various ways. As a young mathematics student, Leaven is immediately intrigued by the numbers inscribed in the small passages that connect the various rooms. The group soon realizes that the rooms are shifting periodically, making the maze harder to solve.
After several theories don’t pan out, Leaven manages to unravel the pattern of the trapped rooms — realizing those rooms are related to prime numbers (specifically powers of prime numbers) — and navigates the group through the ever-shifting maze toward an exit.
The stakes may not always be as high as they were for Leaven, but she never gave up and always approached the puzzle from a fresh angle when thwarted. That’s a sign of a true puzzler.
After being run off the road in an accident, Michelle wakes up in a well-stocked underground bunker. She’s been taken there by Howard, the bunker’s owner, who tells her the surface is uninhabitable and the air outside is poisoned. Michelle quickly realizes that Howard is unstable, but must bide her time before attempting to escape.
Michelle is another remarkably resourceful individual, mapping out the ventilation system in the bunker (while doing repairs), fashioning a hazmat suit out of found items, and outwitting Howard long enough to escape. (Once free, she even manages to whip up a Molotov cocktail and dispatch an unexpected threat.)
Some of the most devious puzzles are the ones where you have to figure out how to use what’s in front of you in creative ways to complete a task. Michelle has this skill in spades.
A hungry nine-year-old girl in a yellow raincoat, Six is the protagonist of Little Nightmares, a brilliant puzzle-platformer where the player must outmaneuver hulking monstrosities and sneak their sneakiest sneaky selves through treacherous scenarios.
Six is patient, resourceful, and pragmatic, carefully choosing when to be stealthy and when to be bold, as both are required to survive the game.
Through pattern identification, enemy observation, and learning from your mistakes, you and Six navigate the oversized horrors of the game. (While the puzzles in Limbo often require the player to die more than once before figuring out the correct path forward, Little Nightmares allows players chances to figure out the puzzle ahead of time, making for a different, but equally satisfying, solving experience.)
Erin joins her boyfriend at a family gathering, only for things to turn sour as masked invaders target the party’s guests. But they get more than they bargained for, as Erin quickly reveals herself as one of the most capable horror movie protagonists in the history of the genre.
Erin gathers information, sets traps, outwits the bad guys at seemingly every turn, and generally dazzles with her intelligence, tactical skill, and resourcefulness.
You know that puzzle where you have to connect all the dots in the square with only three lines, but to do so, you have to draw outside the square? That puzzle wouldn’t fool Erin for an instant. She is constantly thinking outside the box — and the house — in order to accomplish the most with the fewest moves.
Horror movies haven’t seen a puzzler like Erin before, and I almost feel bad for any bad guys who get in her way.
Did I miss any world-class puzzlers from horror movies? Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you!
There are plenty of terrific video game puzzles out there. Whether you’re talking about video games where the vast majority of the gameplay is puzzle solving (like Myst, Portal, The Witness) or games in other genres that still use puzzles in creative ways (Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Uncharted), puzzles are part of the fabric of video games.
But sometimes, it’s almost more interesting when people introduce puzzly elements to non-puzzle games, because it shows off the creativity, cleverness, and skill of the designer.
People have designed escape room-style puzzles in Super Mario Maker (not to mention working calculators!) and Minecraft is known for its user-generated puzzly challenges.
But I don’t think I ever expected Animal Crossing: New Horizons to end up as a refuge for puzzly minds.
For the uninitiated, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a game where each player gets their own island, on which they can build a house, create their own paradise, and interact with fellow players. You can collect animals, plants, fruit, and other resources to craft items. There are tasks to complete, and more characters will arrive to explore your island.
We previously reported on Animal Crossing back in May of 2020 when guest blogger Jen Cunningham discussed their May Day event. During the event, game designers created a special island with a maze and a series of tasks for players to complete as they solved the twisty turny path before them. It was a big success, one of many for the game in 2020.
No, a user named Avery Monsen spent about two weeks turning his island into a diabolical labyrinth of his own design. After deep diving into the game, the creation of Avery’s maze was driven by two factors:
1. It was more fun than the traditional game play
2. It would make the game virtually unplayable, which would make it easier to put down for a while.
And it looks like his plan succeeded. Once the maze was finished, he put the game away. (He recently returned to the game to check out a programming update.)
Apparently, the maze is complex enough to cause travel from any key location to any other key location to last ten minutes. And for a game where you’re free to explore wherever, ten minutes to get from place to place is an eternity.
“I wouldn’t say I forgot about my maze, but I definitely forgot how much of a hassle it is. It’s a nightmare,” Monsen said. “So, I took a few screenshots and posted them to my Twitter. I was very quickly flooded with people who were impressed by my dedication and terrified by my obsession. Both of these reactions are valid.”
He has shared the address code so that other players can visit his island and try their hand at his now-famous labyrinth. “I hope people enjoy my island and I hope it doesn’t make me look totally nuts,” he said.
Who knows what other puzzly works are lurking out there in the world of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, just waiting to be revealed?
Last week, one of the most iconic puzzle games in the history of video games turned ten years old.
Portal 2 is the beloved sequel to the groundbreaking (and mind-bending) game about a gun that creates portals through which you can leap, fall, and maneuver your way past increasingly complex puzzles and locked rooms. You can make portals — blue or orange, one to enter, the other to exit — with the famous portal gun.
Whether there are buttons to be pressed, lasers to be re-directed, or inaccessible platforms to access, your portal gun is the only tool you need to finish the job… if you’re clever enough.
I reached out to some of my video game-savvy friends to ask their thoughts on ten years of Portal 2, and the feedback was unanimously positive:
Each puzzle taught a lesson, building upon your knowledge of the game’s “rules” and “tricks.” By the end of the game, your brain has been re-wired to solve some of the most brutal possible puzzles. It definitely felt like my brain was running at max capacity playing the portal games.
The best puzzle games teach us lessons and allow us to build on those lessons to get better. The more crosswords you solve, the more experience you have unraveling clues and filling in grids. It’s the same thing with Portal.
Another video game enthusiast shared this:
It (along with Portal 1) is one of the only puzzle games that managed to complete from start to finish without resorting to an online hint guide of some sort. It was difficult enough that I felt challenged, but intuitive and logical enough that I was eventually able to figure everything out, which to me is the hallmark of a fun game.
Might also be the first time I ever felt genuine sympathy for a robot in a game. (Or at least the… well, I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who has yet to play through it.)
Oh yeah, it’s also the only first-person puzzle game I can think of where I don’t want to spoil anything for people.
It’s a rare puzzle (and rarer game) indeed where failure doesn’t feel like failure, and instead feels like a learning experience that pushes you to try again with what you’ve learned. Some puzzles and games make that a crushing experience… but Portal makes it fun. Portal makes it compelling. And Portal makes it all so satisfying when you figure it all out.
Portal Reloaded is a mod, released just in time for Portal 2‘s 10th birthday, that introduces a new set of test chambers and, more importantly, a new portal colour. You’ll still be using the old blue and orange ones, but the green one you’ll also get will let you move through time, as you set up puzzles in one timeline and then move them along/solve them across two different eras, set 20 years apart.
When a game that already lets you bend space to your whim with some clever positioning, the possibility of bending time the same way is practically irresistible.
But will people be talking about Portal Reloaded in ten years the same way they do about Portal 2? Unfortunately, there’s no green portals to tell us the answer. We’ll just have to wait and see.
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Non-intuitive puzzles used to be the bane of many video game fans — so much so that they spawned an infamous trope, That One Puzzle, describing a puzzle with a solution so utterly non-intuitive that it bordered on the nonsensical. One of the most infamous came from the Monkey Island series, where you needed a wrench, but instead of just finding one, you had to hypnotize a monkey with a banana on a metronome and use IT as your monkey wrench.
See what I mean about nonsensical?
These days you’re more likely to encounter a non-intuitive puzzle in an escape room or other physical puzzly activity than a video game.
But today, we have a doozy of an example for you. This non-intuitive puzzle managed to baffle people twice… thirty years apart.
StarTropics was a video game released for the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990. It featured a protagonist named Mike, who was visiting his scientist uncle in the South Seas. Mike wielded a yo-yo and had to search for his missing uncle, eventually exploring the island, the ocean, and outerspace along the way.
The game became famous for a non-intuitive puzzle that baffled many players. At one point in the game, you needed to find a three-digit code to utilize a transceiver your uncle had in his shoe. The only clue was “dip my note in water.”
But there was no way to do this in-game.
The solution was simple, but eluded many players because it wasn’t in-game. It was something the players actually had to do.
You see, there was a physical letter from the uncle included with the instruction manual to the game. That was the note you had to dip in water to reveal the three-digit code.
So, yes, the game did tell you what to do, but it’s not intuitive because at no other point in the game do you have to do something outside the diegetic space of the game. It’s not like you need to jump up and down to make your character jump.
This sort of fourth wall breaking puzzling can certainly add to the gameplay, but it’s also very confusing for players not familiar with the concept.
For instance, more than one escape room game I’ve encountered outwitted and baffled some players by utilizing images on the game box itself (or even the bar code) as part of a puzzle. Since this is “outside” what the player has been told is part of the game — the components inside the box — this is clever, but also unexpected. (An entire video game, File://maniac, was built around this concept.)
In 2019, the game was ported over to the Nintendo Switch, the latest Nintendo console, allowing a new generation of gamers to rediscover this cult-classic 8-bit adventure.
Except they forgot about the puzzle and the letter and the dipping into water thing.
So there was literally no way for new players to solve the puzzle, because there was no letter included with the instructions.
This wasn’t the first time StarTropics had been ported over to a new console. But it was the first time they forgot to do something to help players with the letter puzzle. Often, it was a digital copy of the letter, complete with an animation of it being “dipped” into water and revealing the code.
But the Switch version didn’t have that.
So players were stuck.
There’s creating a really non-intuitive outside-the-box puzzle, and then there’s breaking the game entirely by removing the only clue to the solution.
So yeah, StarTropics. A charming game, but baffling in all the wrong ways… twice… thirty years apart.
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