Making a puzzle game about inspecting potatoes at a border crossing sounds absurd. That's because it is. But beneath the quirky premise lies a careful balance of logic, observation, and that satisfying "aha!" moment when everything clicks.
The Core Loop
Spud Customs is Papers, Please meets vegetable puns. You're a border patrol officer in a potato kingdom, and your job is to catch suspicious spuds trying to cross the border with forged documents.
Each potato presents papers. You check them against increasingly complex rules. Approve legitimate travelers, reject frauds, and try not to get fired for too many mistakes.
Building Complexity Gradually
The first day on the job is simple: check if the passport photo matches the potato. That's it. If it's a russet potato and the photo shows a red potato, reject it. Easy.
Day two adds expiration dates. Now you're checking two things.
Day three introduces visa requirements. Some potatoes need work visas. Others need tourist visas. Each has different validation rules.
By day seven, you're cross-referencing multiple documents, checking for security watermarks, verifying signatures, and watching for subtle inconsistencies. But here's the key: each new rule builds on what you already know. The complexity is additive, not exponential.
The Art of Fair Difficulty
There's a fine line between "challenging" and "frustrating." Cross it, and players quit. Stay too far from it, and they get bored.
My approach: every puzzle should have multiple checkpoints. In Spud Customs, you can check documents in any order. Found something suspicious? Flag it immediately. Don't force players to remember everything until the end.
I also added a "rulebook" that players can reference anytime. It's diegetic (it exists in the game world as your employee handbook), and it contains every rule you need. No memorization required—just observation and cross-referencing.
Making Mistakes Fun
Here's a controversial take: puzzle games should let you fail interestingly.
In Spud Customs, if you approve a suspicious potato, you don't just get a "WRONG" buzzer. You get a story. Maybe that potato was a notorious criminal. Maybe they were smuggling contraband. Maybe they had the wrong visa and now there's an international incident.
Your supervisor sends you increasingly exasperated messages. Your performance review suffers. But you learn what went wrong and why it mattered.
Failure becomes part of the narrative, not just a game over screen.
The Potato Pun Problem
Let's address the elephant—er, potato—in the room: the entire game is built on vegetable puns.
Character names include "Spud McKenzie," "Tot Chavez," and "Russet Johnson." The neighboring country is called "The Hashbrown Republic." It's absurd.
But here's the thing: the humor makes the complexity more digestible. Players are more willing to engage with intricate rule systems when they're laughing. The puns lower the barrier to entry while the puzzle mechanics keep them engaged.
Designing for "Aha!" Moments
The best feeling in a puzzle game is that moment when everything clicks. When you notice the subtle detail that reveals the fraud. When you connect two pieces of information you didn't realize were related.
I design every document in Spud Customs to have multiple clues. Some are obvious (mismatched photos). Some are subtle (a watermark that's slightly off-color). The "aha!" moment comes from noticing the subtle detail, not from random guessing.
And when you catch a particularly tricky forgery? The game acknowledges it. Your supervisor sends a congratulatory message. You get bonus points. The game respects your observation skills.
What's Next
Spud Customs is still in development, but the core puzzle mechanics are solid. I'm currently working on:
- More document types (travel itineraries, health certificates)
- A story mode with branching narratives based on your decisions
- Daily challenge mode with procedurally generated documents
- Even more potato puns (never enough potato puns)
The goal is to create a puzzle game that respects your intelligence while making you laugh. If I can nail that balance, I'll consider it a success.