How to create a good quest - useful tips

Greetings to all readers! We want to share the thoughts that have arisen with us and colleagues in the craft while working in the field of quests.

More recently, we finally finally launched the Surprise Me quest designer , in it everyone can create quests and excursions from any device from anywhere in the world. For more than two months, the quest designer has been used for different purposes: some create quests for birthdays, others create quests, being representatives of museums, foreign language schools, event agencies, and others. When communicating with users and receiving feedback, we often come across a pain that does not leave us indifferent.

Most users make mistakes that interfere with the quest participants and discourage them from completing quests. We want to share with you tips on how to avoid the most common mistakes and create a really cool online quest or quest in reality:

The player is always right.
Any game or quest is created primarily for the player, so the most important thing in creating games is the player. When designing, forget that you are a designer, think like a player.

Tips should not be too transparent
Of course, any hint or advice to the player should be veiled, but sometimes the creators hide the true meaning so much that the player cannot understand what they want from him, and he just has a desire to finish the game. Nobody wants to feel stupid!

The participant should be able to win and get to the end, not having experience in similar games.
If you have indicated the location of the next task without a good clue about his whereabouts and think that the player will go looking for him there without any clues just because this is the most popular place - You're not right. Different people go to quests - beginners, professionals, and amateurs! Take care of the participants and give the opportunity to pass the quest to everyone, even those who first time appear in this place or learn about the existence of quests.

The player cannot predict events, leave the opportunity to return.
For example, if in a task you need to recall some fact from a past action, not having the opportunity to return, and then again there are problems - how to remember what happened before? Take care of the players and let them return to the previous level, even if he misses the most obvious things.

That is why in the Surprise Me application we save all previous events and leave the opportunity to watch them again.

Do not give the player tasks that do not have a chance to be completed.
For example, do not force the player to ask passers-by about things that he may not know. There are people who find it difficult to start communicating with others, and sometimes the Internet is not at hand. If the player can solve the answer in the course of a logical riddle, then, of course, then such a decision is more justified.

Do not force the player to complete boring tasks for the sake of completing boring tasks.
This does not mean that only dynamic quests have a place to be, and logic games are off topic. The point is that each task should be followed by the next, or the task should be the key. The player can assemble a large puzzle to find out the code that will need to be entered in the last event, but do not force the player to assemble a large puzzle simply so that he collects this puzzle, or even better - make the puzzle small! Sorry for the exclamation mark, my heart bleeds

If the answer is a word - do not program only one spelling variant.
Often the mistake of the creators of quests is to create only one spelling variant of the guessing word .

If you are creating a logical game, then add the derivatives of this word to its possible answers, as well as its singular and plural forms and in all cases. So provide all the options for entering the answer, for example, to question 2 + 2, the answer may be "4" or "four."

Do not forget about synonyms
Supplement to the previous paragraph. Do you know that the same things are called differently? The player knows this too. So enter the word in the answer, and all possible synonyms that the player can use will be right.

Let the player understand the hints.
Do not share the hints only for engineers or for those who know football. Everyone should understand your tips. Or let the players use the internet to find out some fact from there.

We hope the tips turned out to be useful for quest lovers and their creators.
If you have never tried to create quests, we recommend that it is not at all difficult, the main thing is to give free rein to imagination! By the way, we also launched an affiliate program, and if you feel that you are able to create interesting quests, the program can show very attractive.

We are warmed and motivated by the understanding that we help people reflect their own interesting finds in different parts of the world and create congratulations or gifts "with their own brains" using quests. Please your friends and relatives, it's easier than it sounds!