PCA Puzzle

Build complete escape-room style puzzle dungeons in seconds: themed rooms joined by corridors, locked doors that need the right key, and loot chests that hold the clues.

PCA Puzzle turns a single layout file into a playable puzzle adventure. You plan which rooms go where and which doors are open, sealed or locked. One command then builds the whole thing in your world: the rooms, the corridors between them, the doors, and chests stocked with the items players need to get further in.

It was made by Pixel Creators Academy for teaching servers, where students solve puzzles in adventure mode while teachers run things in creative. It works in any Forge 1.20.1 world or modpack, though.

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What it's like to play

Players start in the entrance room with a few doors in front of them. Some lead straight on, some are sealed with iron, and some are blocked by gold lock blocks. Right-click a lock with the wrong item and the game tells you what it needs, for example "This door needs: Brass Key".

In the middle of each locked door is a keyhole: a sunken gold panel with a dark outline of the item that fits it, so even younger players can see where to click and what they're looking for.

So the group spreads out. They search the storeroom chest and find a Brass Key, unlock the library, and find the Redstone Cores they need for the next room. Each room gives the item that opens another, so players have to explore, share what they find and work out the order. It plays like an escape room built from Minecraft blocks.

Example chain from the bundled example layout, Castle Escape:

1. Entrance → a corridor north to the Storeroom (open)
2. Storeroom chest → Brass Key
3. Brass Key → opens the gold lock on the Library
4. Library → a corridor on to the Vault

Things that make it work well for a group:

• Every player gets their own loot when Lootr is installed, so one player can't take the only key and leave everyone else stuck.
• Keys can't be wasted by accident. Puzzle items only do their special thing on sneak + right-click, so clicking around won't use up a key.
• Works in adventure mode. Students can open locked doors and use chests without being able to break the puzzle. Lock blocks can't be broken outside creative.

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Features

One-command building

• /puzzle build <layout> builds a whole puzzle where you stand, or at the coordinates you give.
• Rooms are placed from structure block files (.nbt) with the right rotation, so one room design can face any direction.
• Corridors are generated between rooms automatically. They have stone brick walls, floor and ceiling, with a lantern every few cells. You can change all of these blocks in the config.
• Doors are set to open, sealed (iron block) or locked (gold block).
• The plot area is cleared first, so grass and trees don't poke through.
• Builds are spread over several ticks, with progress shown at 25%, 50% and 75%, so a large puzzle doesn't freeze the server.
• /puzzle clear removes the whole build, so it's easy to reset a puzzle between groups.
• No room files yet? Any room with a size in the layout is built as a placeholder box with a sign, so you can test a layout straight away.

Locked doors

• The middle block of each locked door shows an outline of the item that opens it, sunk into a gold panel like a keyhole. Doors that only a teacher can open show a plain keyhole.
• Each locked door says which item opens it, either the item name ("Map Shard") or the key from another room ("Storeroom key").
• Use the right item on the door and the doorway opens. The item is used up, so each key works once (except in creative).
• Use the wrong item and the player is told exactly what the door needs.
• Teachers can open any door with /puzzle unlock library, or from a command block for custom triggers (pressure plates, buttons, quiz answers and so on).
• Locks are saved with the world, so they still work after a server restart.

Puzzle items

Each item replaces a vanilla item that the room chests would hold, and has its own texture. They're all in the PCA Puzzle creative tab.

Item	What it does
Master Key	Opens any locked door and is never used up. It has a cooldown (120 seconds by default) so it can't be spammed. A teacher tool: it never appears in loot.
Brass Key	The standard door key, found in room chests. Craftable from a gold nugget and two copper ingots.
Map Shard	Four in a 2×2 square craft an empty map.
Portal Shard	Glows. Sneak + use inside an obsidian frame to light a nether portal.
Growth Dust	Sneak + use on a plant to grow it.
Everburning Torch	Sneak + use to place a torch.
Water Flask	Sneak + use to pour a water source, for example to cross a lava room.
Hearty Bread	Food that can only be eaten while sneaking.
Redstone Core	Sneak + use to place a redstone torch, to power a redstone puzzle.
Miner's Pick	Works as an iron pickaxe, for breaking through to the next room.

Themed loot chests

When a room is placed, its chests become loot chests with a loot table that fits the room. Each one always contains the room's key item, plus 2 to 4 themed extras. For example:

• Greenhouse: wheat, melon and pumpkin seeds and bone meal
• Armoury: arrows, flint, string and a shield
• Kitchen: apples, carrots, cookies and sugar
• Mine: coal, raw iron, rails and torches

There are loot tables for the entrance, storeroom, library, armoury, greenhouse, kitchen, gallery, observatory, mine, redstone hall, shrine and courtyard. Datapacks can replace any of them.

Teacher tools

Command	Example
/puzzle list	See every layout and where it's built
/puzzle validate <layout>	Check a layout for mistakes before building it
/puzzle build <layout> [x y z]	/puzzle build example_castle_escape
/puzzle clear <layout> [x y z]	Reset the build
/puzzle cancel	Stop a build or clear that's running
/puzzle unlock <room> [door]	/puzzle unlock library
/puzzle give <players> <item> [count]	/puzzle give @a map_shard 2
/puzzle givekey <players> <room>	/puzzle givekey @p library gives the item that opens that door
/puzzle clearitems <players>	Remove every puzzle item from players' inventories (and nothing else) at the end of a session

Layout names tab-complete. By default the commands are for ops. Each part is also a permission (pcapuzzle.build, pcapuzzle.items, pcapuzzle.unlock), so with a permissions mod such as PCA Perms teachers can have them without being ops. pcapuzzle.bypass (creative players by default) means keys aren't used up, the Master Key has no cooldown and locked doors can be broken, which is handy for a teacher testing a puzzle in adventure mode.

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Works well with (all optional)

• PCA Quiz with the PCA Quiz Puzzle connector: quiz doors. Set a link's lock to "quiz" (or "quiz:<bank>") and the door opens when a player answers a question. Works between any rooms.

PCA Puzzle has no required dependencies. These mods add extra features if they're installed. Without them, nothing breaks and the feature is simply skipped.

Mod	What it adds
Lootr	Room chests become Lootr chests, so every player gets their own copy of the loot and their own key. Designed to work with Lootr 0.7.35.
Alchemistry + ChemLib	Every puzzle item except the Master Key can be made in the Combiner and broken down in the Dissolver, using real chemistry (a Brass Key is 2 copper + 1 zinc, a Miner's Pick is iron + carbon as steel, a Water Flask is water + silicon dioxide as glass). Room chests also get themed elements, such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in the greenhouse or hydrogen and helium in the observatory. This is a fun way to bring science lessons into the puzzle.
PCA Currency	A few coins (1p to 20p) appear in every room chest, so finishing a puzzle can earn players money.
PCA Puzzle Rooms	Thirteen more rooms built with Chipped: seven manor rooms (two of them working puzzles) and six school rooms, with the "Manor Mystery" and "School Day" example layouts.
PCA Puzzle Plots (with PCA Plots)	Builds a puzzle into every student's plot with one command, so each student gets their own copy to solve.
PCA JEI (with JEI)	A JEI page for every room: press R on an item to see which rooms it's found in, U to see which rooms need it.

Element and coin loot can each be turned off in the config.

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Standalone

PCA Puzzle is fully standalone. It doesn't need the Pixel Creators Academy server or any other PCA mod. It was made for PCA's teaching servers, but it works in any Forge 1.20.1 world, server or modpack.

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Installation

• Minecraft 1.20.1, Forge 47 or newer
• The mod adds items, so it must be installed on the server and on every player's game. Put the jar in your modpack's mods folder.

Getting started

1. Install the mod and start the world or server once. It creates:
   • config/pcapuzzle/layouts/: layout files (.json). An example, example_castle_escape.json, is added the first time.
   • config/pcapuzzle/rooms/: room structure files (.nbt), saved with a vanilla structure block.
   • config/pcapuzzle-common.toml: settings (corridor blocks, lock and seal blocks, lantern spacing, Master Key cooldown, build speed, optional loot).
2. In a creative world with cheats on, stand somewhere open and run: /puzzle build example_castle_escape
3. Walk through it, then reset it with /puzzle clear example_castle_escape.

More rooms: the free add-on PCA Puzzle Rooms adds thirteen rooms built with Chipped, including a working lever puzzle, a mine you dig through and a school with a red light, green light playground, plus two more example layouts. Add-on mods and datapacks can supply rooms as structure files, used in a layout as "file": "modid:room". An add-on can also mark a room as needing another mod (for example a furniture mod): /puzzle validate then says why, and /puzzle build refuses the layout instead of building an empty room.

Making your own rooms: build a room with a footprint that's a multiple of 5 blocks, cut doorways in the middle of each 5-block section of wall, save it with a structure block and copy the .nbt file into config/pcapuzzle/rooms/. Rooms are placed exactly as you saved them, chests and all.

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Tips

• Build puzzles away from world spawn, or set spawn-protection=0 in server.properties. Vanilla spawn protection stops non-op players using blocks near spawn, and that includes lock blocks.
• Run /puzzle validate after editing a layout. It reports overlapping rooms, broken links and any lock item it doesn't recognise.

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Version: 0.3.5 · Licence: All Rights Reserved · Made by Pixel Creators Academy