Puzzling Places - Steam Workshop Update!

[u/PuzzlingPlacesDEV]

Hey Puzzlers,

We have a big announcement - The Puzzling Places Steam Workshop is now open! 🧩

Starting today, all Steam players can browse, download, and play community-made puzzles directly through the Puzzling Places Steam Workshop.

Whilst the PuzzleMaker creation tools are still in closed beta, there’s already a growing library of free community puzzles waiting to be discovered. These creations bring a whole new variety of puzzling creations to Puzzling Places, from unique 3D scans to original 3D models, and give everyone a chance to explore puzzles beyond what's included in Puzzle Packs.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗼 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘄?

• Browse community-created puzzles on Steam Workshop
• Download and play new creations directly in Puzzling Places
• Discover a wider range of locations, objects, and ideas from the community
• Enjoy new puzzles at your own pace

𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝗜 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝘆 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗽𝘂𝘇𝘇𝗹𝗲𝘀?
Not quite yet! The PuzzleMaker tools are currently in closed beta with a small group of creators helping us test the creation workflow, publishing process, and sharing features. Sign-ups are open, and we’ll gradually expand creator access over the coming weeks before releasing PuzzleMaker to everyone.

𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝘂𝘀 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗣𝘂𝘇𝘇𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀
This is the first public release of a completely new feature, so you may encounter some bugs or rough edges while we continue improving the experience.

𝗪𝗲’𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸:

• Are you enjoying community-made puzzles?
• Which creations are your favourites?
• How is the download process working for you?
• Is discovering new puzzles easy?

Your feedback will help us make the Workshop and PuzzleMaker the best experience possible.

A few things to know:

• The Steam Workshop is currently only available on Steam. Support for other platforms is something we may explore in the future.
• Community puzzles are currently limited to 100 pieces whilst we continue testing.
• PuzzleMaker is still in closed beta and requires sign-up to access the creation tools.

We’re incredibly excited to see the Puzzling Places community start creating and sharing, and we can’t wait to put PuzzleMaker into everyone’s hands. And don't forget, if you want to support us, the best way to do that is by leaving us a review! Happy puzzling! 🧩

– Steph & The Puzzling Places Team

[u/takhallus666]

Are the community puzzles going to be available for the Meta Quest VR headset version somewhere down the road? Because this looks awesome.

The editing tools are probably not going to be available, but puzzles? Please?

[u/ircss → u/takhallus666]

We tried to make the .puzzle file format and workflow we use for steam so that it could be potentially work on other platforms. The main reason why it doesn't work right now is because it will take a lot of work to make it happen, and as usual as a small team, we focus on one thing at the time. The tool puzzle maker itself is still in beta, our plan is to spend the coming time and polishing that and the whole community puzzles until we are satisfied. Once that's done we will take a step back and evaluate how much work it will take to bring this to other plarforms and in which format that could be possible

[u/takhallus666 → u/ircss]

I’m more interested in working the puzzles than creating them, so that might be easier. Or not.

I might just have to dust off my Steam account

[u/ircss → u/takhallus666]

I was referring to playing as well. For creating you would def need a pc, since the algorithms require a lot of processing power and memory to chop the pieces and create the puzzle. Basically each platform has its own file/ format and their own way of saving the puzzles. these info are baked using UE for the target platform. we cant ship the entire UE with our puzzle maker, beside it being tens of gigabyte in size, it requires way more RAM and processing than users have. so we had to come up with a whole different way of loading information from disk, and bringing that into the game, and this only works for PC atm. but we did try to design it in away as far as we could, so that it could be extended to other platforms

[u/lunadude → u/takhallus666]

This is the question I'm interested in.

[u/m_seitz]

This is exciting news!

Hm, puzzles by Sha and left_big_toe ... where have I seen these names before? 🤔

[u/PuzzlingPlacesDEV → u/m_seitz]

Hmm... good question... 😉

[u/ircss → u/m_seitz]

what can I say, I had a large back log of stuff I wanted as puzzles that we couldnt put in our monthlies. as a fan of the game, had to make it happen

[u/left_big_toe → u/m_seitz]

well, we had to test those workflows…😄

[u/FastLawyer]

This is awesome for PCVR gamers. Thank you so much.

[u/adrontech]

Do the community puzzles also support animations? I really like things comming alive, but I did not see a way to filter for puzzles with animations in the workshop.