Adventure Game Studio

I've always wondered if it would be possible to optimize an adventure game to a certain ideal, simply using a checklist of commonly-prefered features. What I mean is that during these couple of decades that we've had adventure games, we've grown to learn a number of ideal rules to combat the most cliched adventure game no-no's. Nevertheless, game companies and independent developers keep making the same tried errors year after year. By simple logic, one should be able to create quite an enjoyable game by nothing more than following the basic rules of adventure game-making, but for some reason, it just isn't happening. Usually these development decisions don't even require any extra effort to implement - more often than not, it's a matter of simply saying yes or no. I'm often baffled how even high-level developers are unable to follow the most fundamental adventure game rules.

So, I'd like all of you to help me compile a checklist of the basic characteristics of a successful adventure game. Hopefully, new developers can reference this thread in the future to check if their own game follows which standard. Feel free to add your own rules/suggestions, and if you want to discuss earlier ones, remember to quote what you're talking about.

Here's a quick list right off the top of my head:

• Skippable dialog lines/cutscenes: This has to be the stupidest mistake for devs to make - making dialog lines or cutscenes unskippable. It frustrates the player and is overall a huge waste of time. I remember one recent game that had a lot of dialog and all of it was unskippable. It made hotspot interaction feel like eternal hellfire, as you're forced to sit through the same lines over and over again. And God forbid you accidentally interact with something twice - oh, the horror. Tip: You can force a player to listen, but you can't force him/her to pay attention. If there are plotpoints that you absolutely have to get accross to the player, do it in a subtle manner or provide a way for the player to research earlier interactions/conversations.
  
  
• No pixel-hunting: There are only a few instances where pixel-hunting is justified. In the other 99%, it's downright insulting. There really is no reason why a game would be testing my eyesight, so why do it. It's not increasing the gamelife, because it certainly isn't quality time if you get completely stumped because you missed a single hidden pixel somewhere, nor does it test one's puzzle skills, since you usually only solve pixelhunts with a walkthrough or by sheer dumb luck. Tip: If you want to have a pixelhunt in your game, and you think it's justified and fits the plot, at least have something to point the player to the right direction, such as a sparkling animation for a hidden key or something.
  
  
• Unique hotspot reactions: Nothing's more annoying than having to hear "I'm not gonna do that", "That doesn't go there" or just simply "No", whenever the player experiments with interactions. It's not very motivating when 9 out of 10 times you receive a non-sequitor response just because the developers have been too lazy to explore unlinearity. Tip: For each scene, write up a multiplication table where one axis represents the modes of interaction and another axis represents the separate targets of interaction. This way you can actually see how much repetition there is and work on it. You could even plot out a 100% spontaneous response archive for your game, if you happen to have the patience and imagination for it.
  
  
• Quick-exit from a scene: In 3rd-person adventure games, always include the ability to exit a scene instantaneously, to avoid wasting the players time. I always hate it when developers leave this feature out and you end up using half of the gamelife watching the protagonist wander through different scenes. The Sinking Island for example didn't have this feature (though it did have running), so I for one got very annoyed while playing it, especially since there was literally zero interaction value within the individual scenes, and the graphics were very bland. Tip: Implement instant exit when player double-clicks on an exit hotspot.
  
  
• Clear exit hotspots/rollovers: This one relates to AGS especially, since most indie games in this community seem to utilize the walk-to-specific-threshold-to-exit mentality. This is when you have to walk extremely close to the side of the screen to exit a scene. Personally I find this very irritating especially since I play all AGS games in a window, so when trying to exit a scene, I often end up missing that specific spot and have to click multiple times to make my character finally exit the room. Tip: If at all possible, implement clear exit hotspots, where a rollover image indicates when you're on the correct exit spot.
  
  So, please try and add your own. I'm looking forward to learning something I haven't considered before :).

The big one for most people I would say would be No dead-ends. I cann accept games where you die, but a game where a lack of a particular action will later make the game impossible to win is poorly designed. (If the game has multiple endings and said action is needed for a certain ending, then that is fine...)

Stick to the established rules. One of the most frustrating puzzles ever to me, in Runaway 2 involves using an inventory item on an exit. The only exit in the game that you can interact with. To me, I just felt cheated.

Reward the player. I speak for myself here, but I reeeally don't like it when a game has me complete a ridiculously difficult puzzle and, wa-hey, the player character does something stupid or somebody else drops the crystal ball you wanted etcetera and so you have do even HARDER puzzles to fix it all. I want to move forward in the game - I like puzzles but I play for the story and characters.

Great topic.

Don't make puzzles unnecessarily convoluted - This was really an eye-opener for me in  this post (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=26676.msg337874#msg337874), because I was so prone to doing it in all my early design documents. The key question here is: what fantasy do we want to play out as adventure game players? Do we want to collect endless supplies of keys and try them out on doors in order to proceed through a story? Or do we want to make story-impacted decisions like hijacking a plane, navigating a tomb for treasure, or investigating a murder by interrogating suspects? Give the player clear goals (with some exceptions) - I don't want to be dropped in a game and left wandering around senselessly for an hour trying to figure out what to do. I want to know what my objective is; I want to know why I'm solving these puzzles and what I'm trying to achieve; I want to be able to relate my progress to my ultimate goal. If the game has no goal, then make that clear to the player. You don't have to tell the player exactly what to do, but at least point them in the right direction.

I feel like I have a lot more to say that I can't remember, but most of what I could add is ripped from either the GTD threads, or the very handy "Why Adventure Games Suck..." (http://grumpygamer.com/2152210) by Ron Gilbert.

Streamline the interface. We're making video games; not novels, not movies, not board games, video games. As a result, your interface must serve the needs of gameplay primarily. In my mind, the best interface is the one that allows players to complete any simple action with only one click; there's a lot of debate over this, however, and I can respect that a lot of people like multi-verb systems. This will sound strange, but there is nothing that I hate more than having to move my mouse all over the screen to select a verb or to need to cycle through 5 or 6 options to get to the one I want. If you're absolutely married to these interfaces, include keyboard shortcuts! Even better, include multiple keyboard shortcuts - maybe ones that start with the letters, and also the numbers 1-5.

While I agree with the idea of unique hotspot reactions, many people (some on these forums, even) don't care for them, because it causes confusion as to what is useful and what is not in the game. I can even understand this point of view. For example: There was this one inventory item in Monkey Island that you got pretty early on, and there never seemed to be any use for it, and whatever you clicked it on (or clicked on it), you got the exact same response, so I ended up thinking it was just one of those waste items. Later on in the game, I got stuck, and remained stuck for several years (until the advent of internet walkthroughs), when I found out that you had to give that item to someone.

Also, for the quick exit point...while I agree with it, for some reason, I always disliked it in games that had it. An alternative that I'd prefer would be a map screen (like in Conquest of Longbow).

As for something I've found out, that probably goes against a lot of adventure games out there:

Adventure Game Puzzles are stupid: Now I don't know everybody's mind, but I really can't imagine that anybody plays an adventure game for the puzzles. Lots of people say "Make the puzzle fit the story!", but really, if it is fitting the story, then you don't really notice that it's a puzzle, and thus the 'puzzle' aspect of it is gone. Does anybody ever REALLY want to read a line of poetry etched randomly on a wall, and then decode it, and use it to position a pile of boxes nearby to advance the story? Compound this with the fact that you (as a gamer) would have no idea that the two are connected, or even that the poem is meant to be decoded. Does anyone really get it on by finding a random cat-head and stone mug in a huge maze, attaching it to a nozzle, catching the lava that starts falling out in their stone mug, and then pouring that lava into a machine to advance the story?

The only puzzles I ever did like were technically 'gimmicks'- Like finding out that what you thought was a map is actually dance steps, and then realising you can use the dance steps as a map. Or learning random insults by challenging people, and then using them in a different context to fight the boss.

Now if you find a suitable alternative to puzzles as the gameplay element of an adventure game, please tell me. Because so far, all I've got is adding something from another genre, at which point people tell me "That's not an adventure game!"


PS: Ildu, check your PMs!

Quote from: ildu on Wed 17/09/2008 04:10:17

• Skippable dialog lines/cutscenes:

Absolutely. Not doing this is the single worst design failure for an adventure game (I'm looking at you, King's Quest V).

• Keyboard support: both Sierra and LucasArts had this one down pat, but surprisingly many fangames omit it entirely. If your interface is more complex than single-mode clicking somewhere, you have no excuse for not using keyboard support. Press L for look, P for pickup, etc. Press ESC for control panel, TAB for inventory.
  
  
• Have a simple GUI: players tend not to read manuals. If they can't figure out what your GUI does, chances are they'll just quit and delete your game. If your GUI is different from the standard Sierra/Lucas layout (e.g. Nanobots) add a tutorial so people can figure it out.
  
  
• Allow alternative solutions: if one of your beta-testers (you do have testers, right?) suggests that you can solve problem X by doing Y, do not disallow it simply because it wasn't the solution you were thinking of when you wrote that puzzle. Seriously, just add the extra solution rather than a snarky remark for trying. For instance, Spellcasting 301 has the problem that you can't carry lemon juice in the jar you've been carrying along for ages, because jars self-destruct violently when exposed to lemon juice (?!?!) so instead you have to find a bottle somewhere. Words fail me to explain how ludicrous this is.
  
  
• Events should make sense: in many adventure games, something will change in room X at some point, because you solved puzzle Y in room Z. Frequently, the two are completely unrelated: the bridge won't get fixed until you give the cheesecake to the horse. Don't do this! Players looking for a way to fix the bridge will have no clue that it'll happen magically if you do something entirely unrelated in a faraway room.
  
  
• Avoid one-time-only puzzles: don't make puzzles where you can obtain item X only the first time you enter room Y, or where you have only ten seconds to open door Z before it locks forever. I'm looking at you again, King's Quest V. This is completely unfair; if the player misses some detail he should be able to go back to it.
  
  

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  • Unique hotspot reactions:

  I'm not sure that this one should be in the list, because unlike the others here, it requires a tremendous amount of work to implement. However, a stock response is always better than no response.
  

Some points about storytelling, and one about innovation:

Lead with the hook:
Quite often, I'll download a game, play it for about five minutes, get bored and quit. Then I'll never play it again. Five minutes is all you get. Something interesting must happen in those first five minutes after starting your game that will make me want to continue playing. This can be an exciting plot, great comedy, flashy graphics, a different type of gameplay, or what have you. Whatever you think makes your game cool, makes it stand out, make sure that a player gets to see it in the first five minutes. The Longest Journey has a slow opening, but makes sure that you start off with a playable dream with a dragon and stuff. Otherwise the first hour of the game would just be April doing her laundry and handing in her homework or whatever.

A corollary to this: Don't drop me into the game with no idea about what I'm supposed to do. Start off with a clear short-term goal, and some obvious steps I can take to achieve it. For example, in 5 Days a Stranger your initial goal is to steal whatever is in the safe, and you can easily find the safe in the room you start in (or is this done for you in the intro? I forget). Now you are presented with another goal: get the hell out of the house. Obvious first step is to try the window, which doesn't work. Next obvious step is to look for another exit, which means exploring the house. Through this task you're dragged deeper into the game and the main story.

I don't care about your stupid backstory:
When I'm just starting to play, I'm still trying to decide whether I'm going to stick with it for more than five minutes. I'm not committed to the world you're creating. So don't bog me down in background information. I don't care. Not yet, anyway. Can you imagine if, when you started Monkey Island, you had a ten-minute conversation with the blind lookout, where he explained the entire history of Governor Marley, LeChuck, and the search for Monkey Island? ZZZZzzzzz! No! Instead it's all "I want to be a pirate!"; "Go see the pirate leaders in the Scumm bar!"; "OK!"... and you're off! You learn about all that other stuff once you're into the game and actually care.

This also has a corollary: use cut-scenes with caution. It can be tempting to have a long introductory cut-scene, but this isn't 1989: no one is impressed that you can show moving images on the computer. And my patience is strictly limited: every minute spent on the introduction is one less minute you have to grab my interest with the game itself.

Three good things:
As a rule of thumb, try to come up with three things that makes your game different, unique, interesting, or just cool. Three things is what it takes to impress me. If your game is overall solid, and there are three ways in which it is outstanding, you have a winner. By the same token, there's not much point in coming up with much more than three novelties for each game. Instead of adding more unique features, work on getting those three, and the rest of your game, up to good quality.

For example, you can have one thing that is unique about your gameplay, one unusual twist in your story or in the way you tell that story, and one creative thing about your presentation (graphics, music, animation) or interface. For example, Trilby's Notes had this gameplay mechanic that involved shifting between two realities (gameplay innovation), it told an epic backstory to 5DAS through playable flashbacks (story innovation), and it used a text parser (interface "innovation"). Reactor 09 had a sidekick with an attitude meter that was affected by your actions (gameplay innovation), homoerotic themes (story innovation), and a unique graphic style (presentation innovation) as well as a well-designed custom interface (interface innovation).

You don't have to spread your three things across all the different dimensions of the game, of course. You can keep it traditional in one or two of the areas, and really focus your creativity in the remaining one(s).

Subpoint to Quick-exits:
Make the player character walk reasonably fast. There's still the occasional game where the main character walks annoyingly slow; add scrolling rooms and I'll mash Alt-X*, regardless of the game doing a great job everywhere else.

Subpoint to No pixel-hunts:
Indicate that there's a hotspot under the mouse. A verb bar is great, but a cursor that lights up is enough.
And, seriously, create custom cursors with clear hotspots!

*Alt-X aborts the game immediately.

These are all very good points, and I'm soaking them in like a sponge as I finish up the story line design for my game.

Just one question: Is a 5-minute intro really so bad? I mean, I guess if the player skipped the intro and went into the gameplay (which should always be an option), there could be some short explanation of how the player got where he is and why.

And what does Alt-X do again?

Quote from: TerranRich on Wed 17/09/2008 16:32:48
Just one question: Is a 5-minute intro really so bad?

I think it's acceptable as long as it's skippable and not necessary to enjoy the first part of the game. Players can always get back to it later.

No useless mazes: There are two kind of maze in my opinion, there are those that have a gameplay application outside of being a maze, like the forest of Quest For Glory 1, where the player can be attacked in between locations, or the castle in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where the complex castle layout make it possible to find alternate path to avoid guard patrols. I am not talking about those mazes, the maze that should disappears are those that are only there to be explored, kill the player and add game length. Here I'm thinking about the cave in the Legend of Kyrandia, the various mazes of Zak Mckracken, the desert in KQ5 or the catacombs of KQ6. These don't have their place in adventure games.

Arcade sequences should require brain or be skippable: I don't have problem with arcade sequences but a lot of people just don't like them. Arcade sequences, in a good adventure game, should reward those who use their brain rather than their reflexes. A puzzle or two could be added, which once solved, allow the players to bypass a sequence, or give them an edge or a bonus during the sequence that isn't given to players who simply headed straight to the arcade sequence. Arcade sequence can also be puzzles in desguise, like the bike fighting sequence of Full Throttle, which featured a subtle Rock, Paper and Scissors mechanic. If none of this is done, then the option to skip the arcade sequences should be included. Alternatively, losing in an arcade sequence could also result with a different outcome than death: after losing a fight the main character might wake up in a prison cell rather than dead. One last note: Never put an arcade sequence in the final chapter of a game, never.

QuoteJust one question: Is a 5-minute intro really so bad?

It depends on the intro. If it's something you don't see often in an indie game, like say a comic book kind of introduction, or if it featured amazing artworks, or was fully animated, or in 3D, I wouldn't mind watching a 5 minutes intro. But in my opinion, introductions that are 5 minutes of nothing but in-game sprites talking or monologuing their thought is boring and a misuse of this media's potentials. I play games to play games, not to see in-game sprites read me novels. The very long scrolling text intro, like you can often see in scifi games, detailing two decades of intergalactic conflicts and the politics of entire galaxies, is also a misuse. It's good to see I'm not the only one who delete games for such reasons.

If you can't do one of the thing I listed above, save the useless information for later, when I will care about the little details of your story, make the intro interactive, throw in some music and some unique animations, (the talking, walking and taking an object/opening a door/pushing a button generic hand motion animations do not count as unique), or put in your plot something that will immediately hook me to the game right from the start.

QuoteAdventure Game Puzzles are stupid: Now I don't know everybody's mind, but I really can't imagine that anybody plays an adventure game for the puzzles.

I know that a big chunk of adventure games players nowadays, even some of those that have been playing adventure games for a long time, don't care about the puzzle aspect anymore, see puzzles as an obstacle to the flow and immersion of the story and define adventure games as nothing but interactive stories. Many newcomers to the genre use walkthrough when they're stuck for more than 5 minutes. Many developers make IF or adventure games without a single puzzle. I'm not one of them. I don't play adventure games uniquely for the puzzles, I like good writing and good aesthetics like everyone else, but solving puzzles and using my brain and creativity to overcome situations is one of the reason why I play them. I don't want to play interactive stories. Nor do I want to play visual novels. Nor do I want to solve no-brainer puzzles like those I described in the 3D adventure games thread or play adventure games that are all story and feature no puzzles at all. I like solving a good puzzle just like fans of action genres like to kill a boss or survive a great action-y moment, just like fans of RTS like to see corpses and enemies' buildings burning.

I'm not sure about the rest of your point. If you're trying to say that solving puzzles is not fun at all and should be removed from adventure games, then maybe you would prefer visual novels because the gameplay of adventure games has been about using one's brain and creativity to solve puzzles and get out of sticky situations since forever. Asking for an adventure game without puzzle would be like asking for a first person shooter where you don't shoot anything, where all you do is run through the map and enjoy the sights 'til the next cutscene.

If what you're trying to say is that puzzles don't fit in a lot of adventure game settings, well, the thing is, there are many games where inventory based puzzles have their place in adventure games. In comedic adventure games like Maniac Mansion, Zak Mckracken, Monkey Island, DOTT, Sam and Max, the Leisure Suit Larry, or Space Quest games, wacky inventory puzzles fit just fine, there is no other gameplay mechanics that could suit comedic games better than puzzles. Puzzles, in a slightly less wacky form, even fit in a game like Fate of Atlantis. On the other hand, there are the investigative, serious, dark, horror and realistic settings where inventory based puzzles do not fit very well.

Just because they don't fit in these settings, it doesn't mean inventory based puzzle have to disappear completly. It means we have to find new type of puzzles, new gameplay mechanics that, while not being inventory based, will still require brain and creativity to occupy a bigger place in games with investigative, serious, dark, horror or realistic settings. If someone want to see a good example of that in action, they just have to purchase Dave Gilbert's Blackwell Unbound. Not only it is a terrific AGS game, I wish it was free so more people would realize how innovative gameplay can enhance a story and how gameplay innovation could inject new blood in this stale genre, gameplay speaking.

Don't make the player read too much.
A lot of adventure games use items such as old diaries, journals and letters to help tell the story.  I love these things and will be including similar items in my next project, but I will be sure to keep them short and sweet.  When I come across such items I often find myself skipping the text if it is more than about 2 pages long.  Any more and I get bored, even if the story is good.  We call them Graphic Adventures because they should be exactly that.. Graphic.  If I want to read I'll turn my computer off and grab a Mills and Boon.

If you insist on having such text, then at least make it relevent to the gameplay, as well as to the story... It could contain important clues, instructions or a riddle to help you solve the current puzzle.

Quote from: blueskirt on Wed 17/09/2008 22:37:29
I don't play adventure games uniquely for the puzzles, I like good writing and good aesthetics like everyone else, but solving puzzles and using my brain and creativity to overcome situations is one of the reason why I play them.

Hey, I've been playing adventure games for a long time too. I'm too young to have gotten with Interactive Fiction the first time round, but my first game was SQ3 at the tender age of 4 (my parents were playing it, with me watching and advising, and moving about). And I agree with you- in most cases, those interactive stories, visual novels, and those 'push the boxes around to make a pattern' 3D action/adventure game segments are all pretty uninteresting. That is why I didn't advise them as an alternative for the puzzles. I haven't found a nice alternative for the puzzles yet.

This doesn't mean that puzzles are all that great, though. My parents bought me loads of adventure games as a kid because they had the same idea as you- that unlike those action games, adventure games would involve me using my brain to get past the obstacles. But apart from very few of them, it wasn't really like that. Most of the games you mentioned either had some obstacle that you figured out needed some item(s) to get past, and then you had to find it (or use the item you randomly picked up earlier),  or had lots of 'give/use X, get Y, give/use Y, get Z, use Z to get past obstacle' puzzles. I'd hardly call this challenging your creativity.

I loved it when the obstacle was passed, and I got my little 'prize' of a little animation, or a new room or item, or an advancement of the story (and that kind of feeling is one of the reasons I loved adventure games), but the actual puzzle itself was more often than not pretty silly and convoluted- eg. getting a bucket, filling it with muddy water, getting rid of the innkeeper to get into a room, placing the bucket on the door, getting him go to the laundry, getting a laundry ticket, to get the clothes. Do you realise that there was 1 major goal (which was itself only an item needed for an even greater goal), that went 5 levels deep? I dunno about you, but I didn't find anything enjoyable about the process itself, even if I enjoyed the...peripherals (the item collection, the overcoming of the obstacle, the hilarious situations and descriptions, etc). Thing is, those 'enjoyable' parts, don't really need a puzzle at all, and may even be more enjoyable for the lack of that kind of puzzle.

An interesting type of puzzle that I mentioned earlier, which may have involved use of brain power and creativity was the insult sword fighting in Monkey Island 1- using insults you have, the excitement when you learn a new insult (especially if you've fought the swordmaster and realise it's usable), the fun of beating them, and the logical connecting of the insult responses with the new insults (and that kind of feeling is one of the reasons I loved adventure games). The problem is, these type of puzzles cannot really be re-used without it being obvious where it came from. Another game that I enjoyed the puzzles in was Loom (although some say it had no puzzles)- where you had a set of patterns (and their opposites, most of the time), and had to figure out a way to get past obstacles using them, as well as learning new patterns by exploring.

You even mention your dislike for 'useless mazes'. I actually enjoyed those, because while they may have used an unorthodox, and some say 'wrong' system (where you had a trial-and-error save, die, reload, try again thing going), there was nothing really wrong with it (if you KNOW it's trial and error, and accept that, instead of fundamentally believing it is wrong), and the exploration aspect was fun. With the catacombs in KQ6, I'd whip out my square-lined math paper, and start mapping out the maze. Every time I found a point of interest, whether it be a new inventory item, or a special room, that'd get me really happy and excited (and that kind of feeling is one of the reasons I loved adventure games)

I hope the Adventure game genre isn't defined by puzzle solving. If someone likes the intellectual challenge (ahem) of puzzles, actual puzzle games may very well be what they're after- those games where somehow or the other, they incorporate jigsaws, cryptography, math puzzles, and those sort of minigames into the story.

Quote from: Stupot on Wed 17/09/2008 23:29:06
Don't make the player read too much.
A lot of adventure games use items such as old diaries, journals and letters to help tell the story.  I love these things and will be including similar items in my next project, but I will be sure to keep them short and sweet.  When I come across such items I often find myself skipping the text if it is more than about 2 pages long.  Any more and I get bored, even if the story is good.  We call them Graphic Adventures because they should be exactly that.. Graphic.  If I want to read I'll turn my computer off and grab a Mills and Boon.

If you insist on having such text, then at least make it relevent to the gameplay, as well as to the story... It could contain important clues, instructions or a riddle to help you solve the current puzzle.

I had this problem with The Feeble Files. Information is good but an encyclopedia is a really terrible, undynamic way of presenting it.

Quote from: BabarI loved it when the obstacle was passed, and I got my little 'prize' of a little animation, or a new room or item, or an advancement of the story (and that kind of feeling is one of the reasons I loved adventure games), but the actual puzzle itself was more often than not pretty silly and convoluted- eg. getting a bucket, filling it with muddy water, getting rid of the innkeeper to get into a room, placing the bucket on the door, getting him go to the laundry, getting a laundry ticket, to get the clothes. Do you realise that there was 1 major goal (which was itself only an item needed for an even greater goal), that went 5 levels deep? I dunno about you, but I didn't find anything enjoyable about the process itself, even if I enjoyed the...peripherals (the item collection, the overcoming of the obstacle, the hilarious situations and descriptions, etc). Thing is, those 'enjoyable' parts, don't really need a puzzle at all, and may even be more enjoyable for the lack of that kind of puzzle.

See, this is exactly why I can't understand the view of the anti-puzzle crowd - I loved solving that puzzle. And pretty much all the other ones in MI2.

If you cut out the traditional puzzle (which a lot of people are trying to do anyway, worryingly..) where are people like me going to get the fun out of the game? I mean, if you want to just cut to the chase, good luck to you, grab a walkthrough and have a good time. But *I* can't make the game any more difficult to solve.

The thing is, a game needs obstacle. And the adventure game naturally has puzzles for an obstacle. If you make it like an open book... it's not a game. It's just a story.

Quote from: Eggie on Thu 18/09/2008 02:22:40
I had this problem with The Feeble Files. Information is good but an encyclopedia is a really terrible, undynamic way of presenting it.

There was a post-mortem on the game Portal, where Erik Wolpaw stated the designers' intent to specifically avoid these types of "Audio Log Emails." Instead of having pieces of paper, or diaries you could pick up around the environment, they limited all the backstory information to

Spoiler

graffiti, hidden on a cell wall.

[close]

In my opinion, it gets the job done equal or better than any audio log ever could. And honestly, who wants to pick up a book, inside a game, and read that book instead of reading a real, physical book?

Quote from: Jared on Thu 18/09/2008 02:44:38
See, this is exactly why I can't understand the view of the anti-puzzle crowd - I loved solving that puzzle. And pretty much all the other ones in MI2.

If you cut out the traditional puzzle (which a lot of people are trying to do anyway, worryingly..) where are people like me going to get the fun out of the game? I mean, if you want to just cut to the chase, good luck to you, grab a walkthrough and have a good time. But *I* can't make the game any more difficult to solve.

The thing is, a game needs obstacle. And the adventure game naturally has puzzles for an obstacle. If you make it like an open book... it's not a game. It's just a story.

I'm in the same crowd as Babar here. I tried doing so many things for that puzzle, but eventually I had to use a walkthrough. When I finally saw the solution, I thought, 'who in the world would actually connect the dots with all these separate puzzles to accomplish one (out of four?) sub-goals to accomplish a main goal in the first act?' But then again, I was young when I played it, and I might have a different view on it if I tried again today.

Jared, I'm not advocating a play-through with no obstacles, or some kind of interactive movie. I just wish there was a better gameplay mechanic than these silly puzzles.

Quote from: BabarI just wish there was a better gameplay mechanic than these silly puzzles.

I gathered that - but the issue is that there isn't one. I think most people thinking about adventure games today are hanging too many design albatrosses around their necks.  'No dead-ends', 'no deaths', 'less inventory', 'less puzzles', 'one click interface'! Implement all that and what do you get? An interactive storybook.

I could be wrong, maybe somebody will think of the mythical new gameplay mechanic that isn't just a glorified minigame but even though I've read much pontification from people who want to do away with puzzles in AGs, they never seem to end their talk with a suggestion for what exactly they're to be replaced by.

In the end, I think all you can do is try to keep the game's feet on the ground - most puzzles in Broken Sword, for example, were fairly credible as taking place in the real world. (Albeit with more kleptomania than is generally tolerated)

Quote from: TheJBurgerWhen I finally saw the solution, I thought, 'who in the world would actually connect the dots with all these separate puzzles to accomplish one (out of four?) sub-goals to accomplish a main goal in the first act?'

Well I did without much trouble - it all seemed logical that I'd need Largo's clothes to go to the laundrey, and thus they'd need to be dirty etcetera etcetera.

At the same time it's easy for me to think 'who in the world would actually love getting out math paper and drawing a maze for hours when they're meant to be playing a game'.. horses for courses.

Quote from: Stupot on Wed 17/09/2008 23:29:06
If you insist on having such text, then at least make it relevent to the gameplay, as well as to the story... It could contain important clues, instructions or a riddle to help you solve the current puzzle.

I disagree with this. If there is long text in the game, the player at least has the option not to read it if he doesn't want to. Don't force him to sift through it page by page in order to find necessary clues. I know at least one indie game that buried crucial clues in a thirty-page manual; that's no good.


Aside from that, I don't think anybody is seriously suggesting "interactive movie" gameplay without puzzles; at least, I can't think of any succesful games, commercial or no, that followed that formula - if people want to see a movie, they'll go see a movie. I believe that what is bothering people is primarily puzzles disjoint from gameplay - puzzles that don't fit in the scene, that disrupt the flow of the game, or that have a solution that doesn't make sense. It isn't even difficulty per se - some people certainly are interested in difficult games. It's the cohesion.

I don't necessarily buy the argument that excessively long cut-scenes or in-game documents are OK as long as they can be skipped. For one thing, how is a player supposed to know that there's no essential information in that intro or in that diary?

I think a lot of adventure gamers are completists, if only by bitter experience. We'll pick up every item, exhaust every dialogue option with every character, read every document. Don't justify leaving in the bloat by reasoning that players who don't care for that kind of thing will just skip it.

Since this thread is (predictably) turning into a discussion of what makes a good adventure, maybe it would be a good idea to take the less controversial recommendations and make a page on the AGS Wiki?

Quote from: Snarky on Fri 19/09/2008 00:06:11
I don't necessarily buy the argument that excessively long cut-scenes or in-game documents are OK as long as they can be skipped.

Not exactly - I'm arguing that they're worse if they can't be skipped.

Long conversations tend to be nice, especially if the characters are interesting. But hiding a crucial clue in a lengthy in-game document is essentially a pixel hunt.

Quote from: RadiantAside from that, I don't think anybody is seriously suggesting "interactive movie" gameplay without puzzles;

Not consciously, sure. But when you read suggestions like

QuoteThing is, those 'enjoyable' parts, don't really need a puzzle at all, and may even be more enjoyable for the lack of that kind of puzzle.

What other possible end-result is there for the game?

So then we fall back to

Quotewhat is bothering people is primarily puzzles disjoint from gameplay - puzzles that don't fit in the scene, that disrupt the flow of the game, or that have a solution that doesn't make sense.

Puzzle design. A subject on which an exhaustive amount has already been written.

So... what goes onto the checklist? "Don't write bad puzzles"?

I really don't see the problem with adventure-esque puzzles, even those that seem out of place. That's what adventure games are. Sure, fitting into the plot somehow would be nice, but don't do away with them altogether. Because what you're left with is, indeed, an interactive movie.

Quote from: Jared on Fri 19/09/2008 02:34:55
So... what goes onto the checklist? "Don't write bad puzzles"?

What should go on the checklist is that "it's much easier to be a critic than to be a game designer".

Most people that say "this game has bad puzzles" actually mean "this game had a puzzle that I, personally, didn't like or couldn't figure out as quickly as I'd like to". What we put on the checklist should be based on what the adventure gaming genre is, not on what some people think it should aspire to - and the adventuring genre has been established to contain, among other things, puzzles. I've seen people criticize some adventure game because it doesn't contain feature X, even though no other adventure game contains that feature either; if you think about it, that is rather silly.

Quote from: Snarky on Fri 19/09/2008 00:06:11
...maybe it would be a good idea to take the less controversial recommendations and make a page on the AGS Wiki?

"The neutrality of this page is disputed"

It'd be hilarious to see that on the agswiki...

"This wiki page contains original research."

Sometimes Wikipedia can be retarded.

Quote from: TerranRich on Fri 19/09/2008 17:13:50
"This wiki page contains original research."

Sometimes Wikipedia can be retarded. ^{[citation needed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU)]}

(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wikipedian_protester.png) (http://xkcd.com/285/)

XKCD!!! ;D

I am in agreement with Babar about the puzzle thing.  Optimal interest is generated by immersing  the player in the game world and in the game plot.  Adding Rube Goldberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg_machine) type puzzles only frustrates the masses and only disrupts the players' experience of the game world IMHO.   

A possible compromise is to include easter egg puzzles that aren't necessary to solve in order complete the game or to access any of the plot elements but will instead give bonus points, reveal secret non-critical information, or other reward.   According to the "hard core" puzzle solvers here it would seem that solving difficult, non-plot related puzzles is a reward in and of itself.   I do, however, harbor a suspicion that the enjoyment of solving overly difficult and/or convoluted puzzles, for some folks, is derived from other peoples inability or difficulty in solving said puzzles. 

(http://globalmoxie.com/bm~pix/rube-goldberg~s600x600.gif)

Quote from: RickJ on Fri 19/09/2008 19:12:03
A possible compromise is to include easter egg puzzles that aren't necessary to solve in order complete the game or to access any of the plot elements but will instead give bonus points, reveal secret non-critical information, or other reward.   According to the "hard core" puzzle solvers here it would seem that solving difficult, non-plot related puzzles is a reward in and of itself.   I do, however, harbor a suspicion that the enjoyment of solving overly difficult and/or convoluted puzzles, for some folks, is derived from other peoples inability or difficulty in solving said puzzles. 

That was one thing Duty & Beyond did, and I thought it pulled it off very well. I believe every (if not, some) 'world' in that game had an optional side-quest(s) that allowed you to go for the extra gem in each world. This meant you could solve the main quest, or you could spend time solving optional puzzles, which was fun in its own right. However, you weren't required to complete them in order to move on to the next world. This allowed players who couldn't immediately solve these puzzles move on without getting too frustrated, while still allowing more "experienced" adventure gamers to play around with them.

Quote from: RickJAdding Rube Goldberg type puzzles only frustrates the masses and only disrupts the players' experience of the game world IMHO.

With every statement there's a big fat of course that in some games a Rude Goldberg device can fit the in-game universe perfectly. After all, isn't adventure gaming's single most famous puzzle (http://everything2.com/e2node/Babel%2520Fish%2520puzzle) a Rude Goldberg?

Also, this feels like we're verging towards strawman territory. I haven't said that I WANT Rude Goldbergs in every game and I sure as hell haven't read that argument anywhere else. In fact, I have had a terrible time with the Runaway games because there is simply no way to describe the puzzle design other than 'retarded' when you're taping together wine bottles filled with sand, perching the resultant hour glass on a fork and trading the package for a blank piece of paper, apparently impossible to acquire in any other way.

I think it may be games like that, that simply have shoddy, horrifically programmed and devised puzzles that are causing this push in the amateur community for a lack or radical reduction of traditional puzzles out of a fear of making the same mistakes. I think if people sit down and think long, hard and sensibly about puzzle design it shouldn't be that hard to get it right.

(Of course, people on this thread could have been thinking of Runaway-style design from the beginning, in which case I suppose I'd be in agreement.)

Quote from: RickJI do, however, harbor a suspicion that the enjoyment of solving overly difficult and/or convoluted puzzles, for some folks, is derived from other peoples inability or difficulty in solving said puzzles.

That.. erm, sounds slightly paranoid to me. There seems to be a real 'us' and 'them' mentality forming over the fault line here..

I agree that that Runaway 2 hourglass puzzle was, in fact, retarded. I got stuck at that point, and when I read the solution in a walkthrough somewhere, I just slapped my forehead and shook my head.

I had tried several things on my own that I thought for sure would get me the blank piece of paper from the inventor guy.

I mean, in a way it fit in with the story line (creating a prototype invention for the guy: a "watch fork"), but it wasn't logical and was defintely NOT something the average player would have figured out on his/her own.

I think that's all that adventure game puzzles need: (1) fitting in with the story line, and (2) a logical solution -- or solutions -- that aren't far-fetched.

And I think you should have put spoiler tags around that, Jared. ;)

Quote
With every statement there's a big fat of course that in some games a Rude Goldberg device can fit the in-game universe perfectly. After all, isn't adventure gaming's single most famous puzzle a Rude Goldberg?

First of all the man's name is Rbue Goldberg not Rude Goldberg.   
Secondly there is a huge difference between humorous/silly and obtuse/obnoxious...

Quote

Quote
Quote from: RickJ
I do, however, harbor a suspicion that the enjoyment of solving overly difficult and/or convoluted puzzles, for some folks, is derived from other peoples inability or difficulty in solving said puzzles.

That.. erm, sounds slightly paranoid to me. There seems to be a real 'us' and 'them' mentality forming over the fault line here..

Hmmm,  So you're saying that people don't get any enjoyment in being the first person in their adventure gaming peer group to solve a difficult or seemingly impossible puzzle?   That's not been my observation of human nature.   

Now consider what it's like playing a game with such puzzles in isolation (i.e. no peer group to impress or to get help from).  Also imagine not having much spare time  to devote to games (i.e. work, life, etc have priority).  I personally can't imagine many self supporting people being able to derive enjoyment from such a situation. 

My point is that there is a social aspect to the issue of difficult/illogical adventure game puzzles that is seldom mentioned or acknowledged.   I don't think it's at all paranoid to opine on the subject, suggesting  that at least some of the enjoyment say they get from difficult puzzles is due to the social aspect..

Maybe he meant this Rude (http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/PHO/AAHF152_8x10-No353~Ravishing-Rick-Rude-Posters.jpg) Goldberg (http://www.hollywoodcollectibles.com/autographed/memorabilia/sports/collectibles/authentic/Boxing/Bill_Goldberg_Auto_Photo_mid.jpg) ?

Sorry, don't mind me, I'm just a silly wrestling fan. But back to games...

I think that puzzles should fit the game... make at least a little bit of sense and not feel forced. I remember playing Monkey Island and wondering what the heck I was supposed to do with the "chicken pulley". I like being challenged, but I don't want to give up on the game because I can't figure out what to do.

Though it does make one want to seek out a hint/walkthrough if the story is good enough to want to continue. Though if the story is cliche or slow, it might not even be worth it.

Quote from: TerranRichAnd I think you should have put spoiler tags around that, Jared.

At worst, I have saved somebody 3 years worth of frustration they didn't know they were going to have. And that's assuming they can work out HOW to get the empty wine bottles in the first place.

Quote from: RickJNow consider what it's like playing a game with such puzzles in isolation (i.e. no peer group to impress or to get help from).

That's how I played ALL my classic adventure games save for Sam & Max which one of my mates thought was cool. I didn't have the internet back then until well after Grim Fandango, and even then I never used message boards - the only people who even KNEW about adventure games in the rural Australian community I grew up in were people who I introduced them to, and none of them were at all impressed. (save the Sam & Max guy)

BUT this all depends on what you mean by 'such puzzles' - this thread, afterall, started off talking about the straightforward puzzles in MI2 Part 1 with didn't involve any Rube Goldberg things at all that I noticed. (Putting a bucket on top of an ajar door surely does not count?) I'm having trouble keeping up with the goalposts constantly shifting depending on who's doing the talking..

QuoteMy point is that there is a social aspect to the issue of difficult/illogical adventure game puzzles that is seldom mentioned or acknowledged.   I don't think it's at all paranoid to opine on the subject, suggesting  that at least some of the enjoyment say they get from difficult puzzles is due to the social aspect..

Opining is fine.. but really it seemed to me that you were making an assumption that a foreign viewpoint to your own (liking puzzles) had to stem from a negative root (smug elitism). Probably not quite the right word for it, but that's what I meant by 'paranoid' there - they couldn't enjoy it unless they was something wrong with them!

Quote from: MantraofDoomI think that puzzles should fit the game...

You know what? So do I. And I think everybody else thinks that too, even though we've been kinda arguing over nebulous, barely-defined terms. But this thread is meant to be about the checklist so here's my new suggestion..

* Puzzles reflect the world Firstly, is your game in a complete cartoon world? (eg Discworld, Toonstruck) If so, knock yourself out. If not, think about what kind of world you are creating -  what sort of people inhabit it, what brand of logic does it work under? If things work differently from the real world is the player made aware of this? If it IS set in the real world why is the main character improvising hand grenades from Diet Coke and an old rubber duck? He's meant to be a former FBI agent - can't he just use contacts to get explosives? Which leads to...

* The player IS the character That means that the player shouldn't need to try anything that the character they're meant to be wouldn't. How many schoolgirls try and fashion gliders from an old cardigan and some straws? Would a schoolteacher really dress up like a policeman to search his neighbour's house? And at the same time, use the character's potential. A cat burglar should steal stuff and pick locks. A soldier should shoot people. A scientist should be able to make some cool stuff. If your jock wing commander talks and acts like Guybrush Threepwood the player will be terribly disappointed.* This doesn't mean that the player should have to go and research how this person would act - use player character dialogue to let the player into their mind and how it works.

Any amendments to those, people?


*Like I was when I played the Project Joe demo. He was meant to be a short-tempered thug!

Another one that I don't see too often, but I think it should be mentioned because it relates to what Jared just said...

• The Main Character speak in character. As in... if the character is a typical high school girl then she should talk like a high school girl. A high school girl will speak differently than a ten year old boy who will speak much differently than a scientist or a military dude. That being said, if a high school girl is talking to a military dude, they will both have different speech patterns and personalities.



• Try to cut down on the obscure slang unless it is to set up a specific atmosphere. If I have to try to decipher what a character says because I'm not from where the author is from, then there's a problem. I'm not talking about "y'all", I'm talking about regional slang... things that only people from a certain area say. I don't expect everyone to know what a "steak salad*" is, so I'm not going to have a game where the character assembles one. The only reasonable way I can see having regional slang is if the character is lost in a different place.. but there should be a bit of confusion when coming across those words or phrases.

*The steak salad is a normal salad with bits of grilled steak, two kinds of cheese, tomatoes, hard boiled egg, red onion, and most importantly hot french fries. Served with either French or Ranch dressing. It only exists in Western Pennsylvania.

Quote from: Jared on Sat 20/09/2008 07:42:25At worst, I have saved somebody 3 years worth of frustration they didn't know they were going to have. And that's assuming they can work out HOW to get the empty wine bottles in the first place.

That made me shudder. You could empty the wine bottles by drinking the wine... but not by using on yourself... by using them on AN EXIT. What the f*** was that all about? I take back my suggestion to use hide tags. ;)

A subpoint to long backstory: If it's not OK to put X pages of backstory in a video game introduction, it's not OK to stuff X pages of backstory in a video game manual either. If I read a game manual, it's because I am in the mood to play a game and I first want to see if there's anything I should know before I launch the game, it's not because I want to read a manual. It doesn't mean you can't slip a paragraph of info about the story in your manual, but keep the manual short and keep in mind that not everyone read manuals before you slip puzzle clues or important plot details in there.

I also don't see how a chicken with a pulley can be inconsistent in a game featuring a Grog machine, a circus, a giant Q-tip, Captain Crunch cereals and many references to Star Wars and Indiana Jones. ;)

I second what Jared said regarding Rube Goldberg example, it is hardly representative of puzzles as a whole.

QuoteSo you're saying that people don't get any enjoyment in being the first person in their adventure gaming peer group to solve a difficult or seemingly impossible puzzle?   That's not been my observation of human nature.

If adventure gaming peer groups are anything like the groups I have had in my life (2 persons playing adventure games hotseat, throwing each others ideas before the internet became popular and 4 persons who have and will only have in common 6 LucasArts titles, some Sierra titles and Yahtzee's Chzo games after the internet became popular) bragging right enjoyment is irrelevant for most adventure gamers out there.

Put in a funny narrator(a funny not too funny or boring):

It can be the player(but just try not to play the talk animation), how many people talk to themselves, besides Threepwood.

Inventory items and interface can be THE PUZZLES!

In fact, everything you have been talking here is very important to the genre. It's hard to appeal to a younger generation that does not have to think when the puzzles and difficulties on adventure games are badly made.
Why can't I just smash that window with a kick? I play the role of this hero cop, so why can't I do hero stuff? I can get hurt? Well, I want to try it anyway!
Why can't I just use this screwdriver on something else than a screw? I have to go mad looking for a kitchen knife but the sword on the wall will not do the job?
When you have a gun with you but are not allowed to shoot that lock you want to open and spend half an hour looking for a key it just gets you frustrated.
And what about the time it takes you to open that inventory window, select the pick up button, pick the inventory item, close the inventory window, use it on the object and :
  "That doesn't work here".
  Well thank you very much.

So, for most commercial games these days, the inventory and the interface are the real puzzles!

Quote from: Dualnames on Sun 21/09/2008 20:52:03
Put in a funny narrator(a funny not too funny or boring)

Which reminds me...

Be careful about witty narrators, because they can quickly become tedious if they're not actually funny. Putting puns everywhere tends to quickly fall flat; and getting twenty textboxes in a sequence when LOOKing at a TREE also gets old really quickly.

You don't have to try to make everything funny. Your jokes will stand out better if the entire game is not already covered in a glop of low-grade humor. This is why Monkey Island is so much funnier overall than Leisure Suit Larry.

Make Sure Your Innovations Aren't Cumbersome and Unnecessary

If you're making a unique interface, make sure it doesn't take an entire minute to animate and then be available for clicking. Or if you're adding in a unique feature, make sure it has a purpose and is useful.

Say you have a nice little Ouija board interface for the control panel. Don't blend in every single letter, only some of which have a purpose. And don't make it animate slowly every... single... time... you need it. (I know, I'm using the worse adventure game of all time, Limbo of the Lost, as an example, but it merits mentioning.)

I vote for this thread to be stickied.

Never leave the character standing
Always have a clue to help them onto the next step, never let the Player ask himself
'Well I've done that, now what? Nothing is happening!'
Sublty lead the Plaer onto the next puzzle.

Quote from: DanielH on Mon 22/09/2008 22:11:51
I vote for this thread to be stickied.

Never leave the character standing
Always have a clue to help them onto the next step, never let the Player ask himself
'Well I've done that, now what? Nothing is happening!'
Sublty lead the Plaer onto the next puzzle.

I agree with this, but I think it's important not to hand your player all the answers on a plate... there has to be a balance...  so, the next ideal on the list should be Don't Treat the Player like an Idiot!

I've played games where you pick up an item and the character says something like "Oooh, there's a key in here... maybe I can use it on that locked door in the engine room"...  Now surely, if the player has already come across the locked door in the engine room, he can work out for himself that the key will probably work on that door and the first thing he is going to do is to test it... he doesn't need to be told... and if he does then he should throw his computer off beachy head before racing it to the beach.

No "meta" knowledge
A puzzle should be solveable by your average player with the information provided
by the game. At no point should a player be forced to look up somewhere what the
Doomsday method is or how many neutrons are happily spinning in an atom. It's
okay to rely on common sense or everyday knowledge (mixing colours, as done in
Nanobots, for example), though.

Reward the player
When something relevant has been done, give some candy to the player. Do not build
up tension with a large or complicated puzzle and then smack it down with a flat "Okay,
I got a key." Instead, make a small and unique animation, unlock a new bit of dialogue,
maybe throw in an interesting new item. Make the player feel he did something *right*.

No hard punishment
Death is rare in todays adventure games but can be fun (think all the 'Quest games),
but: If you allow it, include an UNDO function. We're spoiled, we do not save for hours.
We need it.

How about putting all these points in some our wiki?

We've built the AGS wiki (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/) nearly three years ago, it's not used as much as it could (or should) be used and this thread's content would fit perfectly in there :)

Wikis are all about collaborating on stuff like this, maybe somebody is willing to write an article for these tips so everybody can directly add to them then.

See http://www.americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/ for the wiki, and as one rule on Wikipedia says: be bold! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bold)

(We have a wiki?)

But these "ideals" are just personal opinions, not researched facts, conclusions and/or polls about design.

Quote from: jetxl on Tue 23/09/2008 16:18:01
But these "ideals" are just personal opinions, not researched facts, conclusions and/or polls about design.

True, but the majority of these opinions are things that most of us agree on and a large proprtion of us have played enough adventure games to make our opinions valid.  Besides, the good thing about wikis is that such things as this can be discussed and ammended continually by an increasing number of informed people.

Quote from: Ghost on Tue 23/09/2008 02:36:29
No hard punishment
Death is rare in todays adventure games but can be fun (think all the 'Quest games),
but: If you allow it, include an UNDO function. We're spoiled, we do not save for hours.
We need it.

"Death" is a difficult subject in any aspect of life, but in adventure gaming doubly so.   Some people think that dying in these games should be banned altogether.  But as you say, Ghost, it can be fun as long as it doesn't cheat the player of hours of gameplay (although he who doesn't save regularly is a moron).  In some games, such as Broken Sword 4, you are immediately plonked back in time, to a moment right before the event that killed you.  I don't see the harm in that.  It's just an extra element of gameplay to make the experience that bit more exciting.

Quote from: Stupot on Tue 23/09/2008 17:51:18
...he who doesn't save regularly is a moron...

I learned that the hard way. It took about twenty hits from Mancubi, a sad "die while Diablo dies" incident and a broken copy of Dark seed.  ;)

I am very much for the Wiki idea btw. I always thought we should have our own "Bill Of Player's Rights".

If it's not already up, I volunteer to compile the information into a wiki page. I'll call it the Bill of Adventure Gamer's Rights, how's that? (It can always be changed.)

Quote from: TerranRich on Tue 23/09/2008 20:52:47
I'll call it the Bill of Adventure Gamer's Rights, how's that? (It can always be changed.)

Yay!

I admit that I took some of my examples from a much older Bill Of Rights which can be found here (http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/info/Craft.Of.Adventure.txt). Nice read, maybe we can adopt some of it too  ;)

Done: http://www.americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/Bill_of_Adventure_Gamers%27_Rights

;D

A subpoint to no-pixel hunting: There's also a different kind of pixel hunting, when one pickable object is hidden next to several identical and unpickable objects. Example: The broken mirror in Mourir En Mer, where one pickable broken mirror shard was hidden next to 10 identical shards, but if you didn't interact with the correct shard, the main character would keep telling you the generic "I can't pick that up." answer. The same thing happened in Teenagent IIRC, where a pickable rock was hidden in a mountain of identical and unpickable rocks. It's probably worst than your average pixel hunting, because you see item, but the lack of positive reactions from your attempt to take it makes you disregard the item completly.

In the same vein, if an object is present several times in a room or several times in several rooms, and you need to take this object, make every sightings of this object pickable, don't force the player to find the One sighting of this object that can be picked, unless if there is a special reason for that. In a forest, a stick can be found in many other places than this one poorly lit stump.

Test your game thoroughly: Bugs in games suck, and doubly so in adventure games. The game rules in most genres are generally well established, you fairly know what you can do and what you cannot do and you can generally recognize a bug when you encounter one just because the game rules will react in a different way than they should be, it's unfortunately not the case for adventure games. In adventure games, the game rules aren't explained as in other genre, the goal is to discover, by trials and errors, what you can do and what you cannot do. And when a bug manages to slip past the bug testing phase, it can sometimes be hard for the player to recognize it in the game and can often result in time wasted while trying to solve unintentional walking-dead scenarios.

Apologies for resurrecting a 5 year old thread, but who knows, new blood may yield new ideas!

I was faffing about on the AGS Wiki (something more people should do more often, I guess :D), when I came across this:
Bill of Adventure Gamers' Rights (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/wiki/Bill_of_Adventure_Gamers'_Rights)

I looked around for the source of that page, and found this thread. A similarly themed (with cool links!) thread I also found is this: Fundamental Adventure Laws? (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=20227)
Anyhow, these are the listed rights:

Quote
    1 The Right to Skip Dialog and Cutscenes
    2 The Right to Freedom from Pixel Hunting
    3 The Right to Freedom from Monotonous Responses
    4 The Right to Exit a Scene Quickly
    5 The Right to Know Where Exits Are
    6 The Right to Freedom from Walking Deads
    7 The Right to Freedom from Unconventional Solutions
    8 The Right to Satisfying Rewards for Puzzles
    9 The Right to Freedom from Convoluted Puzzles
    10 The Right to Know the Goal
    11 The Right to a Streamlined Interface
    12 The Right to Logical Cause and Effect
    13 The Right to Fairness in Puzzle Occurrences
    14 The Right to Get Hooked Into the Game
    15 The Right to Experience the Back Story Gradually
    16 The Right to Know Where the Cursor Should Go
    17 The Right to Freedom from Useless Mazes
    18 The Right to Fair (or Skippable) Arcade Sequences
    19 The Right to Freedom from Reading Enormous Amounts of Text
    20 The Right to Freedom from Convoluted and Cumbersome Interfaces
    21 The Right to Be Treated Like an Intelligent Human Being
    22 The Right to Solve Puzzles Using In-Game or Common Knowledge
    23 The Right to Undo Death

First off, kudos to (the somewhat recently more absent) TerranRich for setting all that up. I encourage you to click the link and read the detail on each right. Personally, I'm not too sure about 4, 17 or 23. You have some ideas about the others? Any ideas on additions? Maybe some of them could do being rephrased or combined, or maybe set up as a series of contrasting rights, e.g. "The Right to Freedom from Monotonous Responses", followed by something like "The Right to Know if an Interaction is Meaningful".

One that I thought of (probably not phrased optimally):
"The Right to know what to expect from your game".
This kinda applies in several ways. Several examples: If I'm playing a serious detective thriller game, I shouldn't suddenly come across something like the infamous monkey wrench puzzle from Monkey Island. Or if I have an inventory item that has only ever behaved one specific way, it shouldn't suddenly become part of a puzzle where it is used contrary to its nature. Or if I have an extra interaction mode ("Punch" or "Lick" or "Tickle") that seems to only be used for jokes throughout the game, it shouldn't suddenly midpoint in the game, be required to solve a puzzle. In these examples, unless some indication is given to the player to expect or attempt such behaviour, it shouldn't be done. If you're building expectations in a certain way throughout your game, at least gameplay-wise (obviously, I can't speak in terms of story), those expectations shouldn't suddenly flip over or change.

I'm utterly ignorant on how to edit and write wikis, so I wasn't sure how to add a reference link to this thread there.



As a side-topic, more people should add more things to the wiki! I started out faffing looking for a bit of code for keyboard movement, but all I found was a page about a module from 2005. I'd help, but as I said, I'm clueless on how to do most wiki things (create entries, add multiple titles, format them, etc).

This is something of a huge suggestion (and possibly should be split off from this thread and added in the suggestion thread), but you know how wikipedia has those discussion pages for each of their wiki entries? Since the community is mostly built around these forums instead of the AGSwiki (or any AGSwiki discussion pages), it'd be cool to have like a separate sub-forum or something where threads would be the discussion pages of AGSwiki entries, with links to them (and links from the entries to their corresponding threads, of course). It might cause some SLIGHT duplication of information (if, for example, like this thread, an AGS thread is the source of a AGSwiki entry, which then has a discussion page of its own as well), but would really revitalise the AGSwiki, have contributions be more active and sustained, and would set up the AGSwiki as a one-stop reference to help people with specific issues, instead of the current method where they'd have to do several searches of the forums while refining keywords to realise what they need to look for, investigate entire threads to figure out whether the information is totally out of date, and then collect the help from several different relevant threads to solve their problem.

Re: Puzzle obscurity and difficulty.

Some of the more inane puzzles in adventure games are the result of sort of cargo-cult design, where the developers don't really *get* what makes puzzles fun.

It seems like a no brainer, but you should always be asking yourself "What emotions are this puzzle supposed to inspire? How will it do that?"

An ideal puzzle has only one ultimate function: to give the player that "lightbulb over the head" moment. You want the player to arrive at your solution and feel like they're clever. That is what's satisfying about puzzles in any genre.

These are the ways you DON'T want the player to solve your puzzles:
-Through brute force (trying every object on every hotspot)
-Without thought (the game blatantly spells the puzzles out for them)
-By accident (an overly-simplified interface combined with a lack of inventory-based puzzles can lead to this)
-By walkthrough (your puzzles are too obscure and the player doesn't feel confident that they can solve them themselves)

None of those are satisfying! Of course, nobody can design a game that won't run into these sometimes, but an ideal puzzle leaves the player wondering for just long enough before something dawns on them.

That MI2 puzzle was likely designed with this in mind: The player would get stuck long enough to try interacting with overlooked parts of Largo's room, such as closing the door. As soon as they notice that it stays ajar (with a pointed squeak so it's not too subtle) they'll realize that it's part of the solution.

This may not work on all players, and the difficulty of alt-tabbing over to a walkthrough in 1991 affected game design and play. But classic games are full of carefully balanced guiding cues like that. Modern puzzle games as well-- when you play Portal, you'll probably solve every puzzle in the exact way intended by the designers, yet you'll feel like you came up with the solutions all by yourself. I'm sure there's some psychological word for it.

I agree with the sentiment and the most of the points you made, Trapezoid, but I'd also like to point out that I don't think there needs to be an obsession with a singular solution either. Sure, some particularly brilliant puzzles can benefit from having only one solution, because hey, it's really brilliant. But most of everything else doesn't. There's no need to make everything in the game world so damn unique and one-sided. I really enjoyed the alternative solutions in Kyrandia games and I felt they made it more fun and even added replayability. You shouldn't be able to solve puzzles just by trying random things with no clue about what you're doing, but I think you should be able to solve many puzzles through conscious experimentation and thinking logically. Which brings us to my another point.

As much as I treasure properly delivered lightbulb moments, I think there's a lot of obsession over the lightbulb moment as well. Yes, some particular puzzles deserve it, but adventure game designers often chase that so desperately that it results in a system, almost absurdly brutally punishing towards logical thinking. The obsession with difficulty in general also factors in. So what we end up with? You're supposed to find the solution on your own, it's utterly unique, it's not obvious or even logical in the immediate sense and the game will frown upon you until the very last moment when you reach the complete solution. And I don't think this is quite optimal. I think adventure games should reward logic more and should be more appreciative of the player's attempts at finding the solution and intermediate steps towards it, even if it means reducing the difficulty a little. So, I'd say yes, there should be subtle clues everywhere and they should be pretty much generously deployed on every other logical action taken by the player. Because I don't think that being able to get so ultimately stuck that you literally can't do anything in the game that would help your situation unless you know the exact answer is a good design.

This is kind of getting away from the checklist! Here are two more:

No hint system unless it's diegetic (ie part of the world), like being able to talk to Dead Cousin Ted in DOTT or *cough* Dan in "Time Gentlemen, Please!". All the hints players need should be within the game's dialogue, environments, events etc, without having to include a walkthrough function. It implicitly gives approval to cheating your way through.

If you have a commentary, make a function where you can just listen to them all in a row without having to play the game again. It's bad enough when an action game like Portal doesn't have this, but with an adventure game it's prohibitive. (I nagged Dave Gilbert about this when he visited London!)