Designing new game - market research

[BitchslapGames]

Hi, if this post is in the wrong forum then i apologise in advance.

basically, i'm currently working on a project entitle 'semi-lucid nightmare - a stoner's journey.' It's a point and click 3rd person adventure game spanning 4 long levels of puzzles, humour and innuendo. Now i've got the basic background out of the way the question i am asking is what type of gui do the general gaming community prefer? a popup window/icon eg. monkey island 3, a click the list menu like monkey island 2, or a changing cursor like kings quest? i would appreciate all and any opinions on this subject as i am intending this game to acheive popularity and therefore wat it as user-friendly as possible. thanx for reading.

Dobb.

[Kinoko]

I don't prefer any, because it depends completely on the style of game. The GUI should reflect the type of puzzles and the kinds of things the player will need to do a lot of. Take a look at your game's puzzles and simply think about how it would best suit the player to tackle them.

[strazer]

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=18344
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=17812
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=15845

[BitchslapGames]

Thanx for the links, they will be good research information for this. Also if it helps anybody reply to my question the game will be very similar to monkey island or day of the tentacle. Our (the team) main goal is to create an adult game based mainly around humour, with a general theme of 'out of the box' thinking when solving puzzles. thanx again to those who already posted.

Dobb

[Vince Twelve]

with a general theme of 'out of the box' thinking when solving puzzles.

As long as "out of the box" doesn't equal "illogical" it sounds good.

As far as the UI goes: Go with the one you like best.  I think games generally come out better if the designer is making something he/she would like playing.  You can't put that extra bit of love into your game if you don't enjoy playing it yourself.

Personally, I'm a streamlined kind of guy.  I like things to be easy with as few clicks as possible.  I feel that solving the puzzles should be hard, not getting around the interface...

[Abisso]

I like things to be easy with as few clicks as possible

Yeah, I TOTALLY agree. And so I suggest you the "text parser". With it, you don't need a single "click", but just keypressing.