If you've found your way to this page, then you've probably found something you like in A Weekend in Puzzleburg.  But why did I decide to spend my time making this game and not something else?

The answer to that is pretty simple.  I'm a fan of many different types of single-player games, from cozy titles like Abzu and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker to more complex titles like Mass Effect and Fallout 3.  But where are all the games in between?  If I want something with the complex dialog trees of Fallout: New Vegas or Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, then why must I play a game that is simply drenched in blood and violence?  Some games come close to finding this middle ground - for example, the Life is Strange games have meaningful choices and are pretty cozy some of the time, but when they go heavy, they really go for it (this is in no ways a dig on such games, they do exactly what they intend to do, and they do it well).

Surely there must be a space for cozy titles where the player makes meaningful choices on how to interact with the world.  Something that looks and plays like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley but where the cozy quests have the dialog structure of Fallout: New Vegas or Mass Effect.  Something where players can resolve quests in different ways and have to use some critical thinking skills to figure out how they want to deal with the situation presented.

And so we come to A Weekend in Puzzleburg.  Much like other western RPGs, the player can choose their character's background, and they will receive unique dialog options based upon this choice.  You can also be a little more friendly vs. a little less friendly, a little more inquisitive vs. a little less inquisitive, etc. in each conversation, regardless of your character's background.  In this way, you are free to express yourself as you like.

Then there are the quests.  A non-player character (NPC) may ask you to do a simple fetch quest, but when the NPC's instructions don't lead you to procuring the desired item, what do you do next?  Time to use your critical thinking skills, that's what.  What seemed like a role-playing game (RPG) suddenly becomes a puzzle game.  On the surface, it's a cute, cozy game with a scope limited to taking a weekend vacation, but hidden beneath that is the complex quest structure taken from those more "mature" games.  Now we have the gateway RPG I think there should be more of, one that has approachable subject matter but treats the player to all the great story-telling normally locked behind less approachable games.

I hope you enjoy your time in Puzzleburg.  Sign up for the email list to receive updates on the game's progress, as well as additional behind-the-scenes insights such as this.