mqstout: Gloomhaven is more game than puzzle. Some tabletop super-optimizers (who played at intentionally elevated difficulties) liken it to a puzzle, but I never felt that way while playing it. (And I am one who *hates* puzzles in my games.) Gloomhaven did have a couple "puzzle" elements in the meta-plot for unlocking some stuff, but we just looked that up. Not a clue how or if the digital adaptation will be handling that.
Note, however, the tabletop game's expansion, Forgotten Circles, is near-universally panned for being terrible scenarios, most of which are puzzles (and most of which don't give proper feedback or guidance toward solution even for those who like puzzles.) I don't believe this includes or is currently set to include the Forgotten Circles content, though.
To answer the question:
* Games have good, meaningful choices and you can get to the result (winning the scenario) in a wide variety of ways with creativity.
* Puzzles are rather constrained in your routes from start to finish and there tends to be a "perfect choice" at any junction.
yeah. would agree with this.
but i think the COMBAT is sort of a puzzle in and of itself, because gloomhaven has it's own, rules-based, internal timer. you HAVE to beat the scenario you're in, in a given amount of time, or you just die.
but it IS a VERY gamey-game.
[by which i mean that it's VERY rules heavy and that it's quite important to understand the rules in order to play the game well.]
eric5h5: I played the first Vaporum earlier this year; the puzzles are about on par with Dungeon Master puzzles. Stuff like "figure out how to open that door through a series of actions involving throwing things, pressure plates, and teleporters."
(Mild Vaporum complaint: everything you throw is represented in the world as a bag, which you then open to get the thing you threw. I get this saves on having to make 3D models for all the items, but c'mon: in Dungeon Master, then you threw a thing, you saw that thing.)
ah. well, that can be ok.
i've never been truly thrilled with the puzzles in any of those games, exactly because of what you're talking about.
the game that i think did puzzles the best in a dungeon like that was probably "the dark heart of uukruul," but that's a VERY isolated case of a VERY engineered design that incorporates puzzles to good effect.
