The jigsaw puzzle. It holds a special place in the hearts of millions of people around the world. There’s something relaxing and meditative about assembling those little pieces. About slowly and satisfyingly getting to a full picture. Even if so often at least a few pieces are missing!
But what do these pieces have to do with Coupling?
With Coupling, the connection with puzzles happened almost naturally. They’ve been with us since we’ve first assembled an alpha version of the game. Connecting and bonding with people seemed to us very similar to how puzzle pieces work. We can even see puzzle terminology when talking about whether we “clicked” with someone or not.
It was destined to be
So we went with it. But, we kept an open mind. We tried several different minifigure styles along the way:
- We tried pieces that connect by putting one on top of the other. That made it feel like one of the two players had a leading role in the couple, which we didn’t like.
- We looked at completely different designs, such as socks that connect with a bottom connector. It was way too hard to distinguish who was with who when there was a mess of (adorable looking, I might add!) socks on the playing board.
- We tried abstract and more life-like faces that connect diagonally, making a single face together. Their abstract look made it for us to identify with them as our figures and again, they were hard to tell apart on the board.
We even made a survey to see if others got the same impressions as we did. And, the puzzle pieces beat the competition by a long shot! Every time, we got back to the puzzles.
And we can see why. They’re not complicated, everyone understands what they mean and they leave us a lot of free space for fun designs to make them easy to tell apart. They represent the essence of connection in the simplest of ways. It seems that they’re an inseparable part of Coupling now. That’s fine with us. We hope it’s fine with you, too.
