Game Theory: Puzzle Motivation.

[Helm]

If it's not about the story, character development or setting atmosphere then don't use it at all.

That's movie world. In game world, it's about gameplay.

[ManicMatt]

And since when do adventure games hate FedEx puzzles! Plot coupon X is out of reach, but as soon as you got it you know that you need to give it to person Y to solve puzzle Z. It's a great way to get some pasing in the game, and it gives people a desire to get the item, thus playing your game obsessively.

They don't bother me usually, but it's not pacing, it's padding out.

Game developer: "Oh my! Our game is rather short! I know, lets make the player have to turn back on themselves lots of times so they run through the same bit of level again and again, thus making the game -seem- longer than it is!"

If it's something like giving Otis a mint, then I don't mind.

[MillsJROSS]

I' personally love dialog. It's essentially what makes the story in an adventure game. I want to know as much about the gameworld as possible. I go down every dialog path, even if I have to play the game a couple times. I'll click everything with every icon available. I like to interact with what's there. I think "dynamic conversations" would just add so much more to the game, for a person like myself.

I have no real problems with "FedEx" puzzles, as long as there's a perfectly good reason for them, other than adding length to a game.

That's movie world. In game world, it's about gameplay.

In an adventure game, the word "gameplay" doesn't really mean that much to me.

According to Wiki:

Generally, the term "gameplay" in video game terminology is used to describe the overall experience of playing the game excluding the factors of graphics, sound, and the storyline. The term "Game mechanics" refers to sub-elements of the gameplay, but particularly the primary control and movement features of the game (thus excluding things like level design or AI).

So if we take out graphics, sound, and storyline; We have puzzles and how we control our player character left. I don't think the control of the player character is that important, only because whether or not you like to type in commands, use the mouse, or use a joystick (and whatever else you can think of), there are good games in each of these categories, as well as, bad ones. Puzzles are a major contributor to the enjoyment of a game. However, look at The Longest Journey. In my eyes it didn't particularly have any great puzzles, and some of them were insulting. But the depth of the storyline was enough to make it enjoyable for me.

What I really want to know is what we actually consider gameplay, and to that end, how should gameplay be applied to puzzles to make the game more enjoyable. I only ask because gameplay seems like such a vague word. I'm not really understanding how we can say it's all gameplay and nothing to do with storyline, sound, or graphics. Especially, when a majority of gamers buy games purely for graphics, regardless of whether or not the game is the same in almost everyway as many other games.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_play

-MillsJROSS

[Helm]

The lack of forward-thinking gameplay contributed to the genre being considered dead, and only kept in a sort of static-life-support by nostalgic fans and nostalgic fans-that-start-studios alike. Gameplay can be so much more in adventure games than it has been in the era of point and clicks. You say the way you control the character doesn't matter because there's examples of good control on all aspects of adventure games. I disagree. I think point-and-click games destroyed adventure game control. Show me a game that is point-and-click look/use and I will show you 10 ways to make a better game from it. That these were occasionally really immersive experiences is IN SPITE of the control scemes, and that is indeed a testament to the power of the story-driven medium, but it doesn't excuse pointless clickery. Controlling a character in my opinion should not be ordering him around with clicks and waiting for him to do as decreed. That sort of thing leads to a detachment from gameplay. Constant, direct control is better in my opinion. There's so many elements in that sense that make an AGI game far superior in gameplay than say, King's Quest 5, from the aesthetics to the control to the puzzles. Also, point-hand-at-thing-and-guess-what-hand-does is ridiculous and sad that we still play games that are like that. There's so much to discuss here and I don't mean to ramble. Gameplay should mean more than just puzzles in adventure games.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I tend to agree with Helm, though not on the point and click nature of adventure games being damaging to the genre; rather, I believe that style of gameplay was one of the defining features of adventure games that set them apart.  I've never minded clicking on a spot and watching the little guy walk there, as long as he does so at a good clip.  I do tend to like direct control in games, but it doesn't bother me in adventure games at all for some reason-- perhaps it is due to me growing up playing them in this format and expecting it, much like when you play a platformer and expect direct control of the character.  I certainly do think that adventure games need to be more than just the sum of their puzzles, and fun minigames (and more clever use of the inventory) can increase enjoyment immensely.

[MillsJROSS]

I almost completely disagree with Helm. I don't think forward planning has anything at all to do with the genre "death." A genre is a genre is a genre. I mean if there really was a neat trick to add to adventure games to make them sellable again, I really think we would have found out. And just remember, there have been attempts to revolutionize the adventure game. But they go so far to add other enjoyable elements, that we ourselfs don't consider them adventure games. I think that adventure games have gone places, but it's original fans are so purist, that we refuse to put newer games in the adventure game category, even if they have many adventure game elements. I don't think there's a death of the genre, I think there's a death of the genre by our narrow minded view of what makes an adventure game. And what a lot of people fail to realise if you look at the number of sales newer adventure games have today (like Dreamfall), there's actually not that much of a difference in numbers from the "golden age."

If anything the point-and-click gaming allowed adventure games to survive another five or more years. You think that typing in commands makes the game oh so more emersive, and to some point I agree. But I also remember being so angry at a few text parser games when I couldn't find the correct verb, that it completely tore me out of the game. And it made me even angrier when I wasn't far enough away from what I was trying to say, to make much of a difference. And yes to a point point-and-click does limit the thinking process. I don't disagree...however, I do think I can enjoy solving a puzzle with a mouse with as much satisfaction then with a parser, if by clicking object1 on object2 I know how they will mix before-hand. The handicap of making a point-and-click game, is I can click like crazy and eventually find an answer. And I think it annoys me more when I get into a situation where I'm clicking on everything like crazy, because I have no idea what to do. But if this was a text parser game I'd be typing like crazy with the same result.

I think what would be really awesome, is a mix between the two systems. You click on X and put it on Y, and then you have to type a verb to go with it. It would provide the ease of a mouse, and this would help you get out of those traps where you're trying to look at something but you don't quite know the name of the object, and it takes you a couple minutes to find the correct noun. And it would force the player to know what they were solving.

Personally, I just don't like the term gameplay. It's too ambiguous of a meaning for me. You either enjoy the game or you don't, and for me, it has more to do with the storyline, sounds, and graphics then the mechanics. I loved Grim Fandango, but personally, I don't like the mechanics of walking around (although, I eventually got used to it, but never loved it). However, this didn't make or break the game for me. And let's compare it to a game with pretty much the same "gameplay"...MI4. Didn't like it...gameplay had little do to with this. And I didn't even mind the puzzles in that game (other than monkey combat). The sound quality wasn't as good as I expected considering they "improved" their graphics. I'm using these two as an example, because other than storyline, sound, and a few puzzles. They played very similar to each other. Those are my ramblings, make of them what you will.

-MillsJROSS

[ManicMatt]

I'll always hated those text adventure games. Whenever I found one within ten minutes I'd be having fun trying to find words that makes your character kill themselves. "Use sword on me"

Or one game I recall where I told it to f*ck off, and it did.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Mills-  I definitely agree that a poorly written parser can instantly destroy a game, especially when REALLY common verbs are left out like 'get'.  Also, very few adventure games aside from early text adventures ever used the parser cleverly enough that you could type in pretty much what you want and get some kind of response.

[Ali]

I must say I find text parsers frustrating when it comes to action but freeing when it comes to interrogation and examination.

My problem with the text parser is that in real life I don't have to articulate an impulse like 'pick up map' linguistically. I find clicking on an object to be more dynamically satisfying.

On the other hands the ability to ask characters questions and examine my surroundings with the freedom of a good parser is far more immersive than being able to choose from a list of options.

I think the Spookitalk feature in Starship Titanic had the potential to be revolutionary. If only someone other than me had loved the game...

[fred]

It's not exactly new news, but George Lucas seems like a guy who may actually back up his wish for better speech recognition in games with cash.

...the movie-maker expressed he wants artificial intelligence and speech recognition to improve "to a point where you can talk to the game and it will talk back."

Article

I've coded in Jess myself (rule-based AI) and it is indeed possibe to have huge language-processing rule-sets to create semi-intelligent dialogues. Nobody is fooled for long, though, and often I prefer some really funny/well-scripted dialogues to AI. I doubt that those will ever be surpassed by AI, even considering the learning aspects (like in Spookitalk), however interesting it may be. Also, I didnt like the weird iconic language from Sims very much.

[Anym]

It took me a while to read all that. Interesting discussing going on here. Here are my two (Euro) cents (or maybe a bit more).

First of all, any puzzle that doesn't flow naturally (and logically) from the main story should be eliminated. I completely agree with what MrColossal said in his first post. The only exception of that rule I can think of are things that flow naturally (and logically) from the game world. Think of it as (optional) sidequests if you want. I really don't like that most adventure games don't let you do anything that's not related to the story, implying that anything you can do has to help you with your main goal somehow, even if it makes no sense.

A collary to that is that you should never ignore or disallow obvious and maybe unexciting, but very sensible solutions, like buying tools or destroying obstacles. A convulted series of actions might seem more interesting at design time, but at play time it is often just frustrating, especially if there'd be an alternative path in real life that just doesn't work in the game.

As to how to design puzzles that feel natural which are also challenging, my advice is: Don't! (Note that I say "design" rather than "engineer" because puzzle making seems more like an art than a science to me.) You shouldn't force puzzles (that don't fit) into your story and puzzles don't have to be challenging to be enjoyable. I think that despite what Helm says, that the story is much more important to an adventure game (not to games in most other genres though), than its gameplay.

I think an adventure game hardly needs any puzzles. Especially if you're making a freeware game. For commercial adventures I can understand the desire to add puzzles to pad out the game and make it appear longer. It might have even been a necessity, for example, I remember magazine reviews of Loom (nowadays often regarded as a classic) complaining how it was too short.

It might be interesting to have a look at the interactive fiction (what used to be called text adventures) community here, who's favourite genre died before ours (maybe even because of ours) and who's independant game making started earlier as well. There, besides traditional text adventures in the tradition of Infocom or Legend, among other experimental games, a new subtype, that of the puzzle-free interactive fiction emerged and also became popular, not replacing puzzle-driven games, but complementing them. Two examples, from the top of my head, would be Adam Cadre's Photopia and 9:05.

Getting back to puzzles, I don't think the type of the interface influences the quality or the difficulty of the puzzles. Especially not the number of verbs. Loom had more than twenty different drafts (counting reversed ones), The Dig had only two (three if you count walk-to). Which's puzzles were more challenging? For me, definitely The Dig's. Before it, I was kinda suspicious of one-click interfaces. Afterwards, not anymore. I can't remember (but, admittedly, it's been a while since I last played it) any situation in which I couldn't do what I wanted to do because of the interface or (which would have been even worse) in which the interface did something I wouldn't have thought of. I was stuck several times without ever having to resort to pointlessly clicking on everything. Even though I ultimately prefer Loom, I like The Dig very much and would really like to hear Helm's ten (or more) ways to make a better game from it.

Don't get me wrong. I do very much appreciate interfaces that deviate from the norm and the normal set of verbs interesting ways, though. It's a very nice touch, that doesn't improve a game by itself, but opens many interesting opportunities, but if you can't design good puzzles with a one-click interface, chances are you won't be able to design good puzzles with a different interface, even though that might give you more possibilities. Remember that the interface should never get in the way of the puzzles, so picking a different interface to make the game more interesting is OK, but doing so only to make it more difficult isn't. Especially if the increase in difficulty stems from the fact that there are now more verbs to experiment with because you won't be able to guess the correct one due to lack of logic.

The next problem is how to prevent the player from stumbling over solutions without effort, be it through pointless clicking or by accident. Here more verbs really might help, but that's still not a sufficient reason on its own to add more verbs. I think this happens most often when the player is trying to combine every item or in dialogues.

Dialogues are a bit tricky because multiple choice by its very nature allows to "solve" the puzzle simply by exhausing all dialogue options, especially, if you don't want to have dead-ends and walking dead. Increasing the size of the dialogue tree is an obvious workaround, but at the same time, a lot of additional work (that might be better utilised elsewhere). Alternatives might be to include loops, so that the player should be aware of what he says instead of just clicking on the first option until it goes away or having characters actually become angry (and unapproachable) if the player does something wrong and remain that way, until a certain amount of time has passed or until the player made some progress elsewhere. It's very important that the player has always something else to do and doesn't have to wait for a character to cool down again after angering him. After all, who wants to spend his free time with waiting?

For the inventory itmes, again the problem is, that in most games you can only combine things to make things that you're going to need and often won't ever have to disassemble them again. If the combination process was non-destructive, then it should always be possible to take things apart again, not matter if it's actually useful or not. There could also be items that you need to use both on their own and a part of a combination of items, so that you have to disassemble them again at some point and that successfully having combined two items without knowing what for doesn't atuomatically equate progress. If combinations can be taken apart again, you might even want to allow nonsensical combinations, like pushing your screwdriver into your potatoe. And, as Helm said, don't automate the combing process too much. If it takes two logical steps to combine two items, let the player perform both.

Basically, my solution here was giving the players more options so trying everything becomes less attractive. This might help a bit, but doesn't really solve the problem. At least not in the way a parser would. Still, I don't think parsers are the solution, neither for verbs, nor dialogue options. I'd like to elaborate on that a bit and I will, but for now, this post's long enough and it's getting late.

On a sidenote, math is interesting. I don't know much about game theory, though.

[Helm]

Even though I ultimately prefer Loom, I like The Dig very much and would really like to hear Helm's ten (or more) ways to make a better game from it.

Ways to improve The Dig (which I love, otherwise)

part 1: remove stupid crystal puzzles. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Time-consuming, padding, for no reason whatsoever.

part 2: make everything look-at-able so I can also know how the game characters feel about the game world themselves. I know how I feel about it, but this isn't a movie. This is a game. Let me in on the player character's heads. We know, adventure game characters talking to themselves for no reason... "it's just not cinematic". I don't care, it's a genre convention I can deal with, let me in on those heads! Make it 'thoughtspeak' if you have to! In the wonderful IF tradition (sierra kept it on for a few of the early graphical games) a global look-at impression would be nice for a whole alien world.

part 3: discussions that are dynamic and influence how the other NPCs feel about you, not just info-mining CLICK ON EVERY OPTION crap. There's just 3 people on the planet. Give me dynamic affiliations and distancing, make me feel paranoid if I push everyone away. Make the NPCs cooperate if I manage to be diplomatic. Make Brink not do stupid shit on his own if I am EXTRA good at keeping the mission together. Give me these options, don't just throw puzzles in my face that I solve to advance your movie-plot forward. This 'oh this is my story, and if you're a good boy and solve my riddles I'll read you another chapter' stuff we're all better off without.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Heh, the alien puzzles that basically required leaps of logic were what pissed me off about The Dig, I dug the rest of the game though.  Also, while I think Helm has a valid point about the characters reactions to what they see, I don't think that the lack of it hurt The Dig in any way.  And let's not forget that it is based on a scrapped film idea, so having the game more cinematic works.  Also, I don't think that your actions should be able to so dramatically affect the game that the characters stop behaving as independent entities.  Take Helm's example of stopping Brink from doing stupid things.  Brink is an extremely arrogant, headstrong character who essentially does not value Low's opinion at all.  While some ability to alter their relationship would be nice, I don't think that having the power to completely transform Brink's behavior would improve the game, because at some point it conflicts with his basic nature.

[Helm]

I'm not saying make it completely freeform. Just not as on-rails as The Dig was.

[MillsJROSS]

I have no problem with a game that has side quests that don't really do much for the main plot, as long as it serves a purpose. Character development would be big reason to do something like this. And it would be cool, if by doing side quests you get rewarded. Perhaps you get a fuller interpretation of the main story. Something that puts twist to the story, or felshes it out, more than if a person decides not to go down that side quest. Or maybe you get information that helps you solve a future puzzle with more ease.

A collary to that is that you should never ignore or disallow obvious and maybe unexciting, but very sensible solutions, like buying tools or destroying obstacles. A convulted series of actions might seem more interesting at design time, but at play time it is often just frustrating, especially if there'd be an alternative path in real life that just doesn't work in the game.

I agree with this. There's so many times when logic points to another solution, but the designer failed to realise this. This is one of the reasons I highly advocate beta testing, not only to get bugs out, but incongruities within the game. A designer can't think of everything, but if you get enough people to give advice before you release a game, you can rid a game of this problem. At the very least, instead of allowing the logic solution, show enough evidence that the logical solution goes against what your character would do, or how the game world works.

For commercial adventures I can understand the desire to add puzzles to pad out the game and make it appear longer.

I don't think there should be any padding, more so from a comercial game. What I do think is that for games, the length of time to beat a game should be a factor in how much the game costs. I find the industry usually sticks to the same price for every new game, and I don't quite agree with this. It's perfectly fine that a company shouldn't make an adventure game that isn't epic. But if I am able to beat the game in one sitting, the price should reflect this. But I don't think that padding is the answer. The game could be absolutely perfect in one sitting...but let's be honest, the price of a game does affect our expectations. Of course, it's perfectly fine for me to say this considering I'm not the one who has to pay for the production of the game.

I think that regardless of whether or not you use parser, the mouse, or something else, that the biggest problem in designing games, is that sometimes the player is stuck without having any inkling as to what they should even be doing, let alone be solving puzzles. So as a designer, when making puzzles, it should be abundantly clear to the player what their goals are and how they should be achieving those goals. So we can't just ask ourselves, "What puzzles should I add, that go along with the plot?" but afterward "How can I guide the player to a solution." Along with this question we should assume the player knows nothing of the outside world. Regardless of whether or not we think something to solve a puzzles is common knowledge, a designer should make absolutely certain that there is something within the game to allow the player to attain that knowledge. We shouldn't take this to extremes, like explaining what a paper clip is and it's uses. But once again, this is where beta testing can really help designers out, if say someone doesn't grasp the reasoning behind a puzzle, and you find you have to explain it to them, than you should probably place that knowledge somewhere in the game.

Anym, in regards to mixing items in your inventory. I don't think you should be able to mix items in your inventory if they don't make sense, like a flashlight and a pear. I don't think we should be trying to confuse the player. It makes the game tougher, but I think it has more of a possibility of pissing the player off. You could mix items that make sense together, but only if by mixing an item the player thinks they can solve something with it...and either find out that it didn't quite work.

-MillsJROSS

[Anym]

I don't like padding either, but from the company's point of view, the price has the price has to reflect the development cost, whereas consumers (or reviewers at least) always expect to get the same "amount" (time-wise) of entertainment. Of course, padding is hardly entertainment, but maybe the customer won't notice. I don't want to justify padding in commercial games, but try to understand the (misguided) mindset for putting it there in the first place, while at the same arguing that it might be unavoidable for commercial games, but should be completely absent from freeware games. For the same price, Indy 3 was much "longer" than Loom and I admit that I might have been disappointed at how short it was, had I bought it at full price, altough I don't doubt that they costed about the same to make. However, I only got them in a compilation together with three other games, so that didn't matter and today, I very much prefer Loom.

And I probably didn't make myself clear about combining inventory items. I, both as a player and as a designer, can't think of a way to combine a pear with a flashlight, so if my testers couldn't think of anything either, they probably shouldn't be combine-able because you can't do it in real life (unless of course you can use magic or a molecular resequencer to make a pear-shaped flashlight or an edible light source). On the other hand, I can think of a way to combine a potatoe and a scredriver, namely by sticking one into the other, forming a potatoe-on-a-stick. That may be a stupid thing to do and I can't think of any possible use of such an item, but seeing the character do it might both be more satisfying (if you wanted to do it) and more discouraging (if you were just trying to combine everything with everything, than just having the character say: "That would be stupid."

This acutally leads organically into my next point (and further away from the topic of puzzle motivation): What is the relationship between the player and the player character? Does the player take the role of the character or is he just a voice in his head? In action games, there is no question about that. I'm the player character and if I press FORWARD he character will move forward and if I press FIRE the character will shoot. In adventure games, all too often, that isn't the case. You can't USE a gun on a NPC and expect your character to actually do it. At best, you'll get a witty response, at worst an "I don't want to do that." What? I didn't ask if you wanted to do it, I wasn't suggesting you to do it, I was ordering you to do it! Of course, adventure game character usually aren't empty shells for the player to fill with personality, but have a personality in their own right, which you shouldn't always be able to override. For example, it would be out-of-character for Guybrush to stab people in the back, but where do you draw the line? Is it OK not to allow sticking screwdrivers into potatoes just because the character (acting as a mouthpiece for the designer) think it's stupid?

Helm, while your points on The Dig are all valid to some extent, I don't see how any of them are the fault of point-and-click interfaces in general or one-click interfaces in particular. Padding exists in parser-driven games as well. Being able to look at everything is a simple matter of making everything that isn't a hotspot a "global" hotspot, like the SCI games and filling dialogue options with a meaning (other than just information) and consequence is able indepented of whether you have clickable multiple-choice lines or ASK and TELL. Of course, with multiple-choice and your options (and maybe even their possible ramifications) become more visible, but is that that much of a problem?

My two cents, part two, section one: Parsers. While parsers are obviously more powerful and flexible than point-and-click interfaces, I prefer the latter because of its comfort and its accessability. Basically, the same reasons why most people are using a graphical user interface for their desktop in favour of command-line interfaces. If you don't have the typing or language skills, parsers are much more annoying to use and even if you do, most parsers lack the comfort I want from such an interface. I haven't yet seen a graphical adventure with a parser that's good enough. I'd prefer a TADS game to an AGI one any day of the week, but tend to prefer graphical point-and-click adventures to both of them.

My two cents, part two, section two: Gameplay. I think that unlike other computer games, adventure games aren't really aren't about gameplay. They are about story. Gameplay in many adventure games is quite poor actually. If you strip away the graphics and the story you realise just how stupid most adventure game puzzles are, regardless of whatever interface is used. Have a look at the discepancies between what games are mentioned in "The greatest Adventure Game of all time..." and the "What are your favorite hated Adventure Game Puzzles" threads. It looks like the best adventure games didn't necessarily have the best puzzles. For example, why is Grim Fandango so popular? Mostly because of its puzzles or mostly because of its writing? What's more important? To me, GF's story is certainly one of the best of what I've seen in computer games, one of the few computer games which's story is comparable to what you'd find in novels or movies, but I can hardly remember any individual puzzle that struck me a being that great. True, there weren't any especially bad puzzles either, but that's just my point. Don't add unnecessary puzzles and puzzles are subordinate to the story.

If I really wanted a game that's mostly about physical puzzles, I'd play The Incredible Machine or if I wanted to push around crates, I'd play Sokoban. Or look at Gobliiins. It has lots of gameplay and little story, in fact so much, that it's almost more of a puzzle game than an adventure game. Loom (which I seem to be mentioning a lot recently) on the other hand, is almost entirely story. Which is the better adventure game? In that sense, Japanese visual novels are like adventure which leave out puzzles entirely in favour of dialogue. Being completely puzzle-free is probably overdoing a bit, but when balancing puzzles and story, you should definitely opt for puzzle-light unless it really, really makes sense in the framework of your story.

In that respect, advances in graphics and story-telling in other genres probably had more to do with the downfall of adventure games, than actual misdevelopments in the genre itself. Today, people bemoan that so many people buy games just because of their graphics, but back in the day, adventure games were among the best-looking games there were. They weren't too hard on the hardware and had huge panoramic background images and relatively large sprites to show off their pixel art. Also, today games from every genre try to have interesting plots, another thing that used to be one of adventure games' strengths.

[Ali]

I think it is possible to identify the significance of gameplay in adventures.

To my mind, narrative is doubtless the most important part of adventure games, and indeed of most things. In truth though, the majority of adventure games have hackneyed, B-movie, pulp fiction plots. I don't think it stops them being enjoyable, though and that's largely down to the games' interactivity.

Without a story there would be no point in completing puzzle after puzzle. Conversely, without challenging puzzles, many of our favourite games' narratives wouldn't be worth sitting through.

[radiowaves]

Okay, I haven't red all of this but Helms post made me thinking. Still, I disagree with him in most parts.
I think direct control can be way too messy and unessecary if the game does not envolve any thrilling action like shooting etc. But I think that putting mind staggering puzzles and skillful shootings into one game is just a pure mess and is unthrilling to play.
So, in my opinion, point and click option is the best for peaceful adventure games and puzzling games overall, just like in many RPGs.
Bsides, direct control is best only in a certain perspective like (profile) platform, top-down, etc. But games that are isometric, or with diferent perspectives (like most adventure games), it is best to let the computer do the stepping and you do the clicking.

Probably the best way to improve click-adventures is to make them more alive. And by alive, I don't mean putting more animations and characters in there, but more like realistic items and puzzles.
What I mean is that in todays game, there are only certain items that you can pick up, and usually those items are used in puzzles. But my point is that you should put more items in the game, but most of them are not useful at all, you just have to choose the most logical items and compare them.
For example, imagine a toolbox full of all kinds of tools. You need to open a wooden hatch on the floor that is locked with an old rusty bolt that doesn't want to come out, what do you do? Well, lets say, in the toolbox, there is a hammer, a saw, a rug, a pack of nails, a measuring tape, a sharp flat chisel and a small roll of tape... Hmm, now think. All I can say now is that when we got burglars in our country home, they got in through a small hole and to get the things out of the shed, they had to go through a similar puzzle. What they did, was that they used the chisel and carved the bolt out. You can use the chisel with hammer too, if needed.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Probably the best way to improve click-adventures is to make them more alive. And by alive, I don't mean putting more animations and characters in there, but more like realistic items and puzzles.

The problem with this statement is that most puzzles are not realistic, and the ones that are prove to be so mundane and overused that people don't enjoy solving them.  Making a game more alive isn't about puzzles, it's about creating a compelling world.

[lo_res_man]

I think its both, an adventure game is a just a barely interactive movie, without puzzles, and is a puzzle game( like "incredible machine") without story. It needs BOTH.  And a story is more then plot, its also theme, and execution. None of the elements can exist in isolation