VG Thought

Suggest a puzzle game! We're just gonna play this in May. This covers the whole range of what folks consider puzzle games, from Tetris to The Adventures of Lolo.

I'm gonna suggest Mario & Wario, although I need to ask Shouty and Wariofan if they can play it.

Lemmings

Mighty Magic: Clash of Heroes

you know i think we're gonna need to define what a puzzle is

or obviously we don't *have* to but I think to make this one of our genres it would be good to

because i'm sitting here thinking about it and i don't really know that Clash of Heroes actually is a puzzle game. actually just seems more like a weird turn-based battle system (you line up units and defenses and when you get three in a row they shoot at the other team's line-up and if you get through their defenses you damage their HP). But then why aren't Meteos or Tetris Attack turn-based battle systems? Is it the absence of an abstracted state beyond the exact physical position of blocks on screen (no HP, magic meter, unit reserve)? I could have deeper thoughts but don't feel like it right this second, just throwing it out there.

I wanna suggest Catrap for Game Boy here. This one is on VC everywhere so anyone with a 3DS should be able to play it easily.

Also, SNES Mouse games aren't a problem for Mac emulators if thats what you were thinking

What do folks think about defining the puzzle genre?

I've given it some thought, and considering that the point is to broaden our scope of games, I don't think it would make sense to define it right off the bat. Actually, the system for Clash of Heroes sounds oddball enough that we couldn't comfortably stick it in any camp without taking a long, hard look at it. After all, it sounds like you still have trouble doing so. But anyway, the TL;DR is that I don't want to limit our scope, it's just whatever you think of when you think of "puzzle."

I think defining some bounds would be useful if we return to the genre; if it turns out Clash of Heroes plays exactly like Puyo (which I know it doesn't, but hypothetically speaking), then next time we could say, "alright, none of that falling block stuff this time."

My thoughts though. Would others find it useful to have a hard and fast definition to work by?

Yeah you're probably right that we should just play some games first. On second thought it doesn't really matter if they actually end up being "true" puzzle games (by whatever definition we do or don't arrive upon) - if we play Catrap and after the first level it turns into a kart-based first-person shooter, it's still a game we played.

BTW, Clash of Heroes is on the long side - it's like a ~8-10 hour campaign I wanna say? there may be a mode where you can play as all the units without needing to unlock them... I'll get out my DS cart and check if this actually becomes relevant.