We've all heard of them. Recently, I have been drafting out a game where during a dungeon you split into two parties to solve puzzles. How often should control between the two parties switch? This is the first puzzle involving a block, a plank of wood and a catwalk(No, not that type)

-Party A walks along the metal catwalk above the basement of the factory where there is a large part missing.
-Party B goes the other way and finds a large metal container light enough to be pushed.
-Party A Must direct Party B of where to push the container in order for them to be able to get over the metal catwalk.
-After doing so, Party A puts down the plank of wood for party B to climb up it.

I don't want to make the party control switch every two seconds, but I wanted the dungeon to involve teamwork in order to finish it.

This is a pretty hard to answer question. It really boils down to "how common should puzzles be in my dungeon". Because presumably, almost every puzzle in this dungeon will involve both parties, and every time you swap parties it will be to solve a puzzle.

I love puzzles and tend to put one in almost every room, especially in this kind of dungeon. My two-party dungeon in Vindication starts out with simple puzzles, but ends with a gigantic complex room full of 20+ switches that control colored barriers in complex ways, and you have to swap back and forth constantly to solve it. There are thankfully no random battles in the dungeon (only a limited number of one-time touch encounters), but there is a timer, and if you take too long you will miss a unique reward.

Well, my entire game is about clever party management, as often your party will be in 3, even 4 groups and you'll have to switch between them actively. What is important that in this case, don't let the player's probably idiotic decision lead into a no-way-back situation (e.g. a party without a healer and parties can't be rearranged).

Thanks for the comments.

First off: Phantsmal, that last post was pretty much spam. You could've said why you liked the comments, points you agreed with, disagreed with, etc etc. Try not to do this in future.

Secondly: I dislike SPEs. Simply because I find it awkward to keep switching between parties just to make them progress.
Perhaps if you only split up when you needed to, so you don't need to switch parties just to move the other forward, would be a more fluid solution. Allowing efficient movement AND more complex puzzles.

Oh sorry Didn't mean to spam. Thank you once again, I think I'mma stick with only 1 SPE in the entire game. I like the idea of having more complex puzzles. Hmm...Looks like I'll have to design something not to hard; But not to easy.

I find this is the kind of gimmick that only really works when done once. There's a couple of different ways to play them.

You can go the Wild Arms route. The player chooses when to switch. Wild Arms had some good ones - Tripillar in the original is worth looking up, as an example of a three-way split party.

There is also the Skies of Arcadia route. The puzzles are simpler, and involve mostly hitting switches for the other team. The switches are obvious, and the game auto-swaps when you hit one. Given what you were talking about, I'm guessing this is not the kind of thing you would want to do, since the emphasis goes on exploring and finding what is different, and it ends up being rather linear.

The basic trick though is to not overcomplicate the puzzles, and it's not always a bad thing to have some ordinary puzzles in there as well that don't need the party switching but something else. Maybe as a twist, party 1 does not need to solve the puzzle to progress - but solving it opens up a room with extra treasures for party 2?

There's some nice scope for optional areas using a system like this.