Towards Procedural Generation of Narrative Puzzles for Open World Games

Abstract

Story Puzzle Heuristics for Interactive Narrative eXperiences (SPHINX) was developed as a system for generating narrative puzzles in adventure games. While SPHINX is capable of generating narrative puzzles for narrative games with a progressive structure, it cannot be applied to genres that adopt a progressive narrative structure with emergent components like open world video games. In this paper, we present the adaptations we will make to SPHINX to allow it to generate narrative puzzles in open world games that can act as optional side content. We argue that this can be achieved by creating a large database of puzzle items, actions, rules and goals; by altering when SPHINX generates puzzles; and by creating new item properties that remedy potential design issues that may arise. Some design implications are considered and avenues for further work are put forward.