For the past two years, I’ve helped a friend prepare for his annual puzzlehunt. As the test coordinator, my role is a little harder to explain than if I were authoring puzzles or promoting the event. I found myself drawing a lot of parallels to tech industry work, so I decided to write up some thoughts on why I chose this approach and how well it’s been working so far.
Puzzlehunt formats vary , but in contrast to traditional puzzles like crosswords and sudoku, they don’t come with instructions on what you need to do. Also, unlike escape rooms, there isn’t generally a staff member attending to you at all times, actively facilitating your gameplay to keep things moving along. That means that in addition to checking for puzzle correctness, you need to find out where people tend to get stuck and then either revise the puzzle itself or write relevant hints. It’s a tricky balan
What kind of testing does PuzzleBang need?