Original subtitles

Greetings, and well met.

My name is Giovanni Scarpati,

I’m a designer on the Hearthstone team.

In Kobolds & Catacombs, you dungeoneer deep into the depths of the Kobold mines.

In the Witchwood, you champion new heroes

to face off against Hagatha and the monsters outside Gilneas.

But in the spirit of the Boomsday Project,

you'll be doing something a bit more experimental:

puzzles.

When you enter Dr. Boom's Puzzle Lab,

you'll be met with a screen similar to those of previous Solo Adventures.

This is Boom Labs.

We do good work for bad ends.

Each lab represents one of four different puzzle types:

Lethal, Mirror, Board Clear and Survival.

However, this time, you can progress through labs in any order.

If you get stuck or want to try something, you're free to jump around.

Within each Puzzle Lab, You’ll have the opportunity

to help each of Dr. Boom's head scientists and their assistants

with experiments by solving puzzles.

The puzzles start off easy to teach you the basics

but get more complex as you progress through the labs,

occasionally throwing in new, unique cards to spice things up.

This puzzle's a real twister!

When we decided to do puzzles, we knew we wanted different kinds.

Lethal was an obvious choice.

These types of puzzles have circulated since the dawn of Hearthstone.

Time to put this Necrium to good use.

It's content you run into naturally,

from big tournaments to daily play.

The objective is straightforward, clear, and is a great starting point for anyone.

But, since this is single player, we get to introduce weird new mechanics

in situations you would otherwise never run into.

With Lethal locked in, we did some brainstorming.

What are other twists on Hearthstone's gameplay?

Survival came about as a sort of reverse Lethal.

Are you the new test subject?

I will light the fuse!

You're not often in a situation where you get to maximize healing on yourself.

We originally called it the Death Ray Lab,

with one of Dr. Boom's giant inventions pointed at you,

charging up over the course of three turns.

However, after playing with the idea,

we decided to make all of the puzzles take place over one turn,

so you didn't spend too long looking ahead,

and so that restarts felt fast and clear.

Board Clear was also a natural type of puzzle for Hearthstone.

You're always trying to control the battlefield.

It wasn't enough by itself.

I mean, this is Dr. Boom's lab, after all.

I've untangled the hose, boss!

It's not a true Board Clear unless you try to blow up all your own minions as well.

Suddenly, your minions that summon other minions with their Deathrattles

don't feel so helpful,

and, of course, a single card like Defile can open up a whole new subset of puzzles.

For the final lab we wanted something different,

something strange.

Mirror puzzles require you to think outside the box

and play Hearthstone like never before.

Here we go again.

I'll ready the minions, sir.

In Mirror puzzles, copy your opponent's minions exactly,

from their position, to the attack and health.

While it starts off simple, you realize that, unlike the rest of the puzzles,

your goal is shifting because of how you can interact with your opponent's minions.

Do I heal their minions to match mine or just get rid of both?

Given the unique objective, there's paths to different solutions,

and the community will surprise us with some of their own creative answers.

Whenever we create new missions for Hearthstone,

we make sure it's got the same sense of polish and charm as the rest of the game.

When it came to the Puzzle Lab,

we had a ton of puzzles, but had to figure out how to display them

while still retaining Hearthstone's usual look and feel.

That's where the user interface, or UI, comes in.

To share more info about that, here's Max Ma.

Thanks, Giovanni.

On the Hearthstone team,

we believe that the best UI is invisible.

This means the interface shouldn't get in the way of players enjoying the game.

But when you have over 100 puzzles available,

suddenly the UI becomes very visible and in-your-face.

Imagine selecting a puzzle,

loading up the game, finishing in a couple of minutes,

then backing out to select the next one,

and repeat this over 100 times.

Nobody wants that.

So, in the early stage of UI design,

we decided to stack the puzzles into groups of 8 or 9,

which is what we felt was the right amount of content per play session.

That way, seeing as there's just 1 loading screen,

it would allow you to enjoy Puzzle Labs for much longer.

Also, if you decide that you need to take a break,

you will be able to leave at any time

and come back later to resume where you left off.

Next, let's talk about transitions between puzzles.

When you successfully solve a puzzle,

everything on the board and in your hand vanishes

and is replaced by new minions and new cards for the next one.

There is a lot going on behind the scenes

to ensure the transition is fast and smooth.

And this is something that seems easy,

but took us a lot of time to get it to feel right,

so that everyone will be able to spend more time playing

and less time waiting around.

We know Puzzle Labs can get challenging,

and we want to make our players feel comfortable with experimenting,

being creative, and most importantly,

unafraid of making mistakes.

So we added something just to help you with that.

It's the reset button.

If you find yourself stumped - cast the wrong spell,

attacked the wrong minion,

or did things in the wrong order -

that's OK.

All you need to do is hit the reset button and try again.

We actually got a little help from Giovanni as we were designing the UI.

Remember the sliding panel on the puzzle-selection screen?

It was initially meant to slide off completely to reveal each lab,

but Giovanni stopped at my desk,

saw an early sketch of that screen and said,

"Oh, that looks like a progress bar."

And that made us think,

"What would a progress bar look like in Dr. Boom's lab,

where explosives are lying around?"

That's where we came up with the idea of using a sliding blast-proof door

to slowly unveil each Puzzle Lab as players progress.

Thanks, Max.

We've shared a lot about the Puzzle Labs,

but we need to talk about its finale before we end.

The puzzles ramp up in difficulty

as you work through the different labs.

But the most difficult puzzles of all are against Dr. Boom.

Boy, are these puzzles rough!

Science is the answer!

What was the question again?

In a play test, a group huddled around some final designers

trying to solve the final Dr. Boom Board Clear puzzle.

Watching them tag-team the puzzle

and attempt different solutions was hilarious.

Having people stop by to watch others solve puzzles or spitball solutions

was commonplace in development.

You're onto something fun

when your coworkers don't want to stop "testing" the new content.

Dave Kosak, the lead mission designer, spent over an hour being stuck on a puzzle

and couldn't help test the rest

because he absolutely refused to look up the answer.

We had a ton of fun crafting these puzzles,

and can't wait to see you experiment with them.

Dr. Boom has hired you to do science,

so go forth and do science in whatever order you want.

We've built the Puzzle Labs to be just that. We hope you enjoy it.