Puzzle Hack Guidelines
A puzzle hack is any submission to the hacks section where the majority of levels are designed to be small games, problems, or other scenarios that the player has to use their knowledge, experience and intuition solve.
Levels in puzzle hacks may come in a wide variety of styles, including those with multiple solutions or that are designed to be a sandbox or more freeform. Hacks that are otherwise platforming games with an occassional puzzle level, or that are predominately platforming but have some in-game puzzle running through it as a secondary task, are not suited to this category. Solving puzzles must be the main purpose of hacks in this category.
As "Misc: Puzzle" is relatively new, the guidelines for this category may evolve over time. If you suspect something is miscategorized, or could be recategorized to this category for whatever reason reach out to the moderation team.
Category Guidelines
The following guidelines are not to assess what counts as a puzzle nor how good a puzzle is but to outline what criteria count towards a hack getting accepted into the Puzzle category.
Remember to review the Guidelines for all hacks in addition to these before submitting your hack.
A puzzle hack is any submission to the hacks section where the majority of levels are designed to be small games, problems, or other scenarios that the player has to use their knowledge, experience and intuition solve.
Levels in puzzle hacks may come in a wide variety of styles, including those with multiple solutions or that are designed to be a sandbox or more freeform. Hacks that are otherwise platforming games with an occassional puzzle level, or that are predominately platforming but have some in-game puzzle running through it as a secondary task, are not suited to this category. Solving puzzles must be the main purpose of hacks in this category.
As "Misc: Puzzle" is relatively new, the guidelines for this category may evolve over time. If you suspect something is miscategorized, or could be recategorized to this category for whatever reason reach out to the moderation team.
Category Guidelines
The following guidelines are not to assess what counts as a puzzle nor how good a puzzle is but to outline what criteria count towards a hack getting accepted into the Puzzle category.
- Puzzle hacks should contain mostly puzzle levels
It should go without saying but if a significant portion of a hack is not focused on solving puzzles, it will not be accepted into the Puzzle category. Hacks that have the occassional puzzle level or have puzzle-like elements are better suited to being submitted to the other categories and being tagged with thepuzzletag. - Puzzles should have clear solutions
The intended solution to any given puzzle should be clear to players and the relationship between the puzzle elements and the solution should be relatively intuitive. Alternative or unintended solutions, that make the puzzle elements meaningless or the intended solution easy to bypass, should be avoided; players not should end up in situations where they are confused or unclear as to how they came to solving the puzzle. - Meta-elements should always be available
If your hack's puzzles have elements are outside of the game, they should be included with the submission in the form of documents or other media, or be reasonably accepted to be universally available. Do not use non-permanent or online sources for puzzle clues as they may become unavailable. Alternatively, you may include a contingency solution or bypass to ensure those puzzles can be skipped if external clues disappear. - Puzzle hacks should have original puzzles
Copying puzzles from other games or hacks, or recreating known puzzles in Super Mario World, is not recommended as people may already know the solutions (and it doesn't show much creativity). You are however encouraged to try all sorts of puzzle forms in Super Mario World.
Remember to review the Guidelines for all hacks in addition to these before submitting your hack.