Monte Carlo Analysis of a Puzzle Game

When a puzzle game is created, its design parameters must be chosen to allow solvable and interesting challenges to be created for the player. We investigate the use of random sampling as a computationally inexpensive means of automated game analysis, to evaluate the BoxOff family of puzzle games. This analysis reveals useful insights into the game, such as the surprising fact that almost 100 % of randomly generated challenges have a solution, but less than 10 % will be solved using strictly random play, validating the inventor’s design choices. We show the 1D game to be trivial and the 3D game to be viable.