A puzzle dependency chart you and your co-designer both edit

What this board can't do for a puzzle chart

• No automatic layout. Puzzlon's IFWiki page says layout is automatic there. Here you drag every card, so a big chart takes tidying.
• No loop check and no solvability check. Nothing warns you if two puzzles need each other. You read the arrows yourself.
• No engine or file export. Puzzlon exports SVG; the itch.io chart tools save and load JSON. This board has no such export, and nothing it holds reaches Unity, Unreal or Godot.
• An arrow is only a line. You choose its caption and colour. It doesn't know that a card is an item or a puzzle, so the types in the example are words in the card titles and colours, which you keep up yourself.
• Check an arrow after you move its card. Arrows between cards in different lists stay attached when cards are reordered inside a list and when a whole list moves. We haven't tested what an arrow does when its card is dragged into another list, so look at it after you move one.
• 150 items on the free plan, across your account. Each card and each list is 1 of the 150. The example is 24. A full game of around 140 puzzles, items and clues passes the limit on its own (our arithmetic), and any other board on your account counts too. Pro is $5 a month billed yearly ($59.99 a year) and removes the item limit.
• 5 boards and 3 images per board on the free plan. Keep one board per game, or one per chapter. The example has no images.

How to build a puzzle dependency chart on one board

Gilbert's Grumpy Gamer post says a chart shows what the player needs before they can do something, and that a flowchart shows the order things happen in. Those are different, and the board follows the first. This is how the example puts it to work.

1. 1Make a list for each area. The example has a Cafe, a Platform, a Ticket office and a Signal box. Put a card in the area where the player does the thing.
2. 2Make a card for each puzzle, item and clue. Start the title with the word PUZZLE, ITEM or CLUE and give each its colour, so the chart reads at a glance. Put the owner in the card text, as the example does.
3. 3Draw arrows from what you need to what it opens. The sugar tin points at the stationmaster puzzle, the oil can at the luggage hatch, the mail sack key at the desk drawer. Caption each "needed for", and use a different colour for clues so a path stands out.
4. 4Write a goal card at the end and point the last puzzles at it. In the example both signal puzzles point at "Open the platform gate".
5. 5Keep an Open questions list. The example holds three: can the player go back to the cafe, is a dog a puzzle or a joke, and does one puzzle give two items. Questions that touch the story go to the writer, questions about code go to the builder.
6. 6Read it backward from the goal. Follow the arrows from the goal toward the start. A puzzle with nothing pointing at it is either a starting puzzle or a gap in your chart.

The board shows the dependencies and who owns what in one place. It can't tell you whether the order is fun. Whether to cut the dog or add a hint is a design call for you and your co-designer.

What designers say about charts and tools

These are single accounts, not a measured pattern. In r/adventuregames (November 2024), u/Ekkobelli, who writes the puzzles while a friend does the programming and graphics, said they use Twine for dialogue, Google Docs for the plot and Google Sheets for items, and already use dependency charts but struggle to tie it all together. u/Kubdya_Khavis said puzzles are generally organized with a puzzle dependency chart and pointed to visual boards like Milanote; u/DrElectro suggested a Miro board. u/caesarcub said they keep two charts, one for puzzles and one for rooms, plus a spreadsheet and a story document.

Gilbert's Grumpy Gamer post is blunt about software: you need something that rebuilds the charts as you connect nodes, because in a flowchart program you will spend forever reordering the boxes. His post names OmniGraffle on the Mac and graphviz. A shared board is the opposite trade: you do the placing, and in exchange your writer and your builder can all open the link and edit it, with no install.

For escape-room design

The same board works for a room. Make a list for each space or puzzle stage, a card for each puzzle, lock, prop and clue, and arrows from each prop or clue to the lock it opens. In r/escaperooms (June 2021), u/Kulty said that, as far as they knew, escape room design does not have any specialized tools. u/MuppetManiac said they use a flow chart, named the puzzle dependency chart as something more specific and linked Puzzlon. That is two people's views, not a survey. What a board adds is a place where the designer and the builder both see which prop is missing.

Set up the board with your co-designer

1. 1In the share menu, set "Anyone with the link can edit". New boards start view-only.
2. 2Send the link, or the 4-digit join code. The code expires after 2 hours of inactivity, so send the link to anyone you'll need later.
3. 3Each person signs in free (Google, Apple or email) to write. Someone who isn't signed in can open the link and read everything, but can't change anything. Once they're signed in, what they move or add shows up on your board within a few seconds, and you see theirs the same way.
4. 4The board counts as one of their 5 free boards, and cards they add count toward their own 150. If they're already at 5 boards, they can still open the link and write; the board just isn't added to their boards.
5. 5Agree who owns which cards. If two of you type in the same card at once, the two edits merge letter by letter with no lock, so give each person their own cards and write the owner's name in the text.

Free calls on the board run up to 60 minutes per call, with a warning 10 minutes before the end; everyone signs in free, calls aren't recorded, and Pro has no limit. If your game is a branching story rather than a set of puzzles, the visual novel planning board is built for that.

Puzzle chart and game-planning tools, side by side

Each row is from the tool's own page (for Puzzlon, its IFWiki entry), read on November 11, 2026. Features and prices change, so check the page before you choose.

When another tool is the better choice

• You want the chart laid out for you. Puzzlon lays it out automatically, and the first itch.io tool adds flow direction and snaps nodes into rows or columns. A shared board starts empty and stays where you put things.
• You want to play the story. Twine publishes to HTML and Arcweave has a playtest, so use one of them when it has to run. This board plans, it doesn't run.
• You want engine integration. Arcweave and articy:draft X list Unity and Unreal integrations. This board has none.
• You are a solo designer on one machine. A free itch.io chart tool is a quick way to draw one chart. A shared board starts to pay off when someone else needs to edit it.

Questions