jaunty orchid
While I think HN2's puzzle design is overall really good in a vaccum, when combined with the rest of the game design, there's a bit of a problem. The game is simply more fun whenever you're doing stealth and not worrying about the puzzles - the puzzle solving is not well integrated into the stealth-based gameplay, and almost feels like two separate games clashing at times.
My own personal thoughts on how to make the puzzles more integrated into the stealth and AI gameplay - as well as allow for more complex puzzles - is to bring back and rework the pinboard. Instead of simple puzzles, have each house treated as a big deal with a big large puzzle that needs to be solved through collecting clues, which can solve smaller puzzles, which lead to more clues and useful items to eventually give the player the pieces needed to solve the larger puzzle. The pinboard would connect the clues together to direct the player on what to do.
In practice it may not work, but in my head, this would allow the puzzles to be complex while, at the same time, taking player's focus off of puzzle solving and more on stealthing, as the pinboard would give the player the important connections needed in order to solve the puzzle. This is probably my most experimental post yet, so any community criticism is welcome.
timid steeple