You could probably make a poptarts are sandwiches alignment style thing out of this.
Basically, any video game with an explicit goal, or set of goals is just a puzzle game with extra steps.
What buttons do you push, when do you push them, what does this accomplish, how does that lead you to your end goal, etc.
You could even argue that multiplayer tactics constitute a puzzle, a more social puzzle.
Yes, this is reductive, but this is a dumb showerthoughts post.
What game involves super human perfect timing that does not include some other kind of puzzle to be solved?
Fighting games? Micro Heavy RTS or MOBAs? Bullet Hell Shooters?
All of these have strategy and can thus be reduced to puzzles.
I suppose if a game was purely just, click button as fast as you can after something happens, then ok, you got me, but add even one more element, and technically this is an extremely simple puzzle, albeit brutally unforgiving in terms of getting your human body to solve the puzzle.
Is there something different you have in mind?
EDIT: Alkheemist answered this later, with rhythm games (that have no elements of strategy ie, GuitarHero is not a puzzle but NecroDancer still is). I agree those are not puzzles. Skipped my mind as I have not played one in a very long time.
I would say you also have got me on a pure RNG slot game. Theres no gameplay, theres no puzzle, theres no strategy.
At least, within the game itself. If youre going to somehow exploit or hack or something, arguably thats now a real world puzzle of how to do it and not go to jail, but excepting that… yeah, there are lots of online ‘games’ with literally no puzzle element, just do thing and then random output happens, with a bunch of flashy graphics that have 0 bearing on what the outcome will be, whether its a digitized horse race or slots or whatever.
I would argue those are not really games though.
The player cannot make any choice that is more or less likely to achieve the goal, thus its the illusion of a game. No meaningful choices.
You were doing well until the No Real Scotsman fallacy.
You think that pushing a button that generates a purely random outcome is a game?
To me, those are neither games nor puzzles.
There is nothing one can do, in terms of thought or execution, to influence the outcome.
Other than I suppose choosing to play or not play.
To me, a game must include some capacity of the player to influence whether they succeed or fail, within the game itself.
(I didn’t downvote you - it wasn’t me!)
Yeah. I think anything that passes time by giving you dopamine hits qualifies as a game. However, that wasn’t my point. I was saying, you declared a statement, and then when given counter-examples, declare they aren’t really games because they don’t meet your previously declared statement. It’s a logical fallacy.
What’s the name of that mobile game where you tap to shoot an arrow at the exact perfect time so that it lands on the right spot on a spinning circle? Well, that’s the game where I fail to see any strategy. It’s all about perfect timing and tolerating the anger boiling inside your head.
Oh, and there’s this other almost equally infuriating mobile game that I haven’t yet deleted for some strange reason. It’s called Stack, and your goal is to build the tallest stack possible by having supernatural timing abilities in your fingers. Oh, and what about Flappy Bird or the dinosaur game built into Google Chrome? Basically the same idea, but you don’t have a lot of time to prepare for what’s coming. You just need to have lightning fast reaction time and perfect timing. Now that I think of it, there are lots of games where timing takes the center stage.