Toulouse, France - September 4-6, 2012 Fun and Games’2012 | FULL PAPERS 64 Puzzle Games: Player Strategies across Different Interaction Modalities Jaime Carvalho LaSIGE & Department of Informatics, University of Lisbon Edifício C6, Campo-Grande, 1749-016 Lisboa jcarvalho@lasige.di.fc.ul.pt Phone: +351217500247 Luís Duarte LaSIGE & Department of Informatics, University of Lisbon Edifício C6, Campo-Grande, 1749-016 Lisboa lduarte@lasige.di.fc.ul.pt Phone: +351217500247 Luís Carriço LaSIGE & Department of Informatics, University of Lisbon Edifício C6, Campo-Grande, 1749-016 Lisboa lmc@di.fc.ul.pt Phone: +351217500603 ABSTRACT This paper presents the design of a puzzle game for the Android platform along with a study on puzzle solving strategies across different interaction modalities. Solving puzzles is among the oldest challenges and entertainment activities available to us. However, despite major technological advances, the design of such games has never provided individuals with challenges beyond visual puzzles. We capitalized on this opportunity to tackle the design of puzzles which go beyond visual cues, utilizing sound and vibration feedback as well to offer a fresh challenge to players. Along with the design of this game, our research focused on analyzing puzzle solving strategies applied by users. In particular, this paper details a study in which we analyzed if players apply the same strategy to solve a visual and a audio puzzle. Results point that players often opt to solve prominent areas first, leaving more abstract zones to the end, independently from the interaction modality involved. Author Keywords Audio Puzzles, Puzzle Games, Play Strategy. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Interaction Styles. General Terms Performance, Experimentation, Human Factors. MOTIVATION Videogames can be used for various ends, ranging from personal entertainment [2][17], as a catalyst for social interaction [12], as a support tool for teaching and learning process [18] or as an experimental platform for new technologies or design concepts [11]. In the education domain, games are of particular importance for students to develop learning skills which allow them to easily create abstractions of concepts or algorithms [10]. In particular, puzzle games have yielded positive results in such learning process. There are various examples of the usage of puzzle games in distinct areas. Hill [5], Levitin [9][10] and Ross [15] have defended utilizing puzzles and games in general as a motivating factor for a diversity of courses. Ginat [4] has also explored the usage of puzzle games as a catalyst for students in learning environments. Outside the education domain, there has been a deployment of a puzzle game to foster communication and collaboration between children with autism spectrum disorder [1]. All these examples are elucidative of the importance of games in general, and in particular puzzle games, for a diversity of domains, improving aspects of people’s lives. In the entertainment domain, and with the proliferation of various types of mobile devices [3], videogames are currently widespread across different platforms [11][12][16]. Furthermore, given the increased computational power [7] and number of features present in modern mobile devices, developers are recurring to different modalities [14] to provide players with alternative challenges which would not have been possible before [6]. Yet, one game type which still lacks proper support is puzzle games. There are a few examples of puzzle games which go beyond the visual version [2], but they are either too simplistic, or are yet to explore the full potential of modern smartphones to provide players with adequate challenges, specifically with puzzle representations which go beyond the traditional figure jigsaw puzzle. Given the lack of multimodal versions of puzzle games for mobile devices, we envisioned and developed a Multimodal Puzzle Game which allows players to tackle visual or audio puzzles. The game was developed for Android platforms and allows for the full customization of the puzzle challenge, ranging from number of pieces, to help types as well as allowing the selection of any picture or song present in the user’s personal library to be a puzzle. Taking inspiration from different puzzle learning strategies and learning environments, we designed a study which aimed at assessing if players use similar strategies for solving multimodal puzzles. In particular we wanted to determine if Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Fun and Games' 2012, Toulouse, France — September 4-6, 2012 Copyright © 2012 ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-1570-8 /12/09... $10.00