List of Game Clichés

[Kinoko]

Kinoko: I never said that I didn't like the mainstream because it was mainstream. I dislike it because it is so predictable. I realise that there are many people that like the comfort of predictability, but I get bored of it whether it is music or games. The french sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has written an interesting book: "On television", which has lots of thoughts on why mediums are locked into the mainstream. The main theory is that investors want to be sure that the product is received well to get revenue. I'd say the same goes for many indie designers - you want to make something that you are sure works, not spend your time on some strange experiment.

Yeah, I know. I honestly wasn't having a go at you, it was just that what you -said- made me think of people who ARE like that, so I was having a go at them in general.

[edmundito]

The idea of going with cliches is very tempting because we all like those games, but why not come up with original ideas? don't you want people to love your stuff? Or do you want people to love yours stuff because it's reminiscent of a classic game? I prefer coming up with my own thing.

Classic AGS clichés:
- The game takes place in space (or a Mandatory Space Quest Reference)
- There are pirates involved (or Mandatory Monkey Island Reference)
- You're a cop/detective of some sort
- It's a medieval fantasy world
- Fourth wall is broken
- Use key on door "puzzle"
- DOTT-like graphics

And not to be confused with cliches, but more like trademarks:
- Blecup is in the game
- the name Chris or Jones or Chris Jones is in the game

[GarageGothic]

Don't forget two of the must-haves: Grave robbing and tombstones with funny/dirty limericks and rhymes.

[edmundito]

Don't forget two of the must-haves: Grave robbing and tombstones with funny/dirty limericks and rhymes.

How did I forget those?  :'(

[jetxl]

The idea of going with cliches is very tempting because we all like those games, but why not come up with original ideas? don't you want people to love your stuff? Or do you want people to love yours stuff because it's reminiscent of a classic game? I prefer coming up with my own thing.

Classic AGS clichés:
- The game takes place in space (or a Mandatory Space Quest Reference)
- There are pirates involved (or Mandatory Monkey Island Reference)
- You're a cop/detective of some sort
- It's a medieval fantasy world
- Fourth wall is broken
- Use key on door "puzzle"
- DOTT-like graphics

And not to be confused with cliches, but more like trademarks:
- Blecup is in the game
- the name Chris or Jones or Chris Jones is in the game

You're saying that space games, medival games and cop are automaticly clichés.
W-R-O-N-G!!!11!
And there are a milion si-fi, fantasy and murder mistery books and writers who can prove you wrong.

If people would listen to you, then there wouldn't be ANY games made. Except for Dr. Mario, if he is a real doctor. Oh, wait. Using Mario is also a cliché.

As last: If I want to make a bluecup reference or a use-key-on-door puzzle (read any yatzee articles or something?) then I'll do so, and nobody is going to tell me not to.

[Lucky]

You're saying that space games, medival games and cop are automaticly clichés.
W-R-O-N-G!!!11!
And there are a milion si-fi, fantasy and murder mistery books and writers who can prove you wrong.

He's talking about AGS clichés. And he hit the nail there. 90% of AGS games are either scifi, fantasy or detective stories. And thus, my current project is pretty cliché. But I've never been a really big Space Quest fan, so could we let it pass? :

[edmundito]

Yeah, Jet, pay attention! And I was just admiring that you're out there making board games and other non-space/detective/medieval games with AGS...

And as I said about the trademarks, they're not clichés. In fact, there's a 99% chance that there'll be a bluecup in my game... it's like an unspoken rule.

[jetxl]

He's talking about AGS clichés. And he hit the nail there. 90% of AGS games are either scifi, fantasy or detective stories. And thus, my current project is pretty cliché. But I've never been a really big Space Quest fan, so could we let it pass? :

90% of ALL the games have a si-fi, fantasy or murder mystery setting. So claiming this is mearly an AGS cliché is also un-true.

I say that ags games are in general more original than commercial games.

How many space quest games and monkey island games have there been made in AGS? No more than 10 in total. How many football games has EA made?
Got my point?

[Kweepa]

And as I said about the trademarks, they're not clichés. In fact, there's a 99% chance that there'll be a bluecup in my game... it's like an unspoken rule.

So just because you happen to like a cliché, it's suddenly not a cliché? How convenient.

[edmundito]

And as I said about the trademarks, they're not clichés. In fact, there's a 99% chance that there'll be a bluecup in my game... it's like an unspoken rule.

So just because you happen to like a cliché, it's suddenly not a cliché? How convenient.

lol... yes

I don't know... I think of a cliché in terms of more like it's part of the setting, the story, or the challenge. bluecup is like our dirty little secret in-joke.

Jet, I was just pointing out some ags clichés just for fun. I wasn't necessarily criticizing or saying that it's bad. And I don't even want to get started with what the mainstream games industry does!

[Lucky]

90% of ALL the games have a si-fi, fantasy or murder mystery setting. So claiming this is mearly an AGS cliché is also un-true.

Touché.

How many space quest games and monkey island games have there been made in AGS?

I think he meant games that have obviously been influenced by those games. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, those are good games after all. But too many games have been influenced too much by them.

Commercial games have actual reasons to be unoriginal. AGS games shouldn't have those limitations.

[Wellington]

Something said earlier here really rung true for me:

"I keep thinking "Why does it always have to be the whole world, why not just save the suburb I live in or that sad kid in school nobody cared for?"

There are some good reasons to have the player quest to save the world, or avenge his family/lover/friend/dog, but there are also a whole LOT of bad ones. How many games have  heroes who fight to save a world that's so incredibly cardboard it would tip over in a strong wind? Or who seek to avenge family that we never really meet, and have no real reason to care about?

A game where you save one person whom you care about would be good. Not too many games have that, although the forced failure to save somebody that you care about is surprisingly common. Maybe computer game writers are worried that we'll get repulsed by sentimentality unless it's crushed at some point.

SPOILERS FOR CHRONO TRIGGER:

In the classic RPG Chrono Trigger, there's an overarching Save the World plot that manages to work. However, it's introduced well after the player has seen a bit of the world itself, and has gone on a few quests to help other characters. More importantly, the player sees what will happen to the world if it is not saved before even being told that the PC is going to save it.

In other words, there's emotional involvement here. But the overarching save the world plot is nonetheless the least interesting and entertaining thing in the game. Well, that, and Crono, the lead PC. More interesting is the sideplot where Crono dies, and the player can ressurect him, resulting in a blissful reunion with love-interest Marle and a sentimental music box theme song. It's heavy handed, but it WORKS. And it's not the death itself that makes the plot work. It's Marle's response. Without Marle, this wouldn't have been much of a plot twist. She isn't well-written, or deep, but she makes the emotional pull.

Likewise, without somebody who actually cares, and is worth caring about, the Save the World plot can't hold up. Computer and video game players are willing to invest a lot of imagination in the barest outlines of a character, but you have to give imagination if you want to get some back.

[edmundito]

Apparently, saving the world is a considered a "teenage power fantasy", where usually young people want to do something that will change the whole world. As you grow older, the feeling starts to go away and you have other wishes in your mind... whatever they are because I'm young and I still want to save the world!

Monkey Island 1 was about saving the day, but Monkey Island 2 wasn't. I love Monkey Island 2 because it's not really about becoming a great (goofball) hero, but it's about saving your ass from being a complete failure because everything has gone down the drain... and that's what makes those games uniquely enjoyable since their themes are completely different. Final Fantasy is always about saving the world in every single game, no matter how much the plot and characters and graphics change.

[Wellington]

Oh, and I forgot to mention the most annoying adventure game cliché puzzle ever.

I'll present it in step-by-step format. After I give each clue, try to guess the puzzle's resolution. Score yourself at the end.

Spoiler

1. There is a locked door in front of you.

[close]

Spoiler

2. It has the kind of keyhole you can look through normally...

[close]

Spoiler

3. But the keyhole is blocked by something on the other side.

[close]

Spoiler

4. There is a gap under the door.

[close]

Spoiler

5. You have a sheet of paper.

[close]

Spoiler

6. You have a thin, bladed instrument.

[close]

SOLUTION:

Spoiler

7. Slide the paper under the door. Poke the keyhole with the instrument, knocking the key onto the paper. Pull the paper and key back under the door. Use the key to open the door.

[close]

If you guessed:

Before clue 1: You are an experienced adventure gamer who apparently shares my opinion as to what the world's most overused puzzle is, and you don't need clues to guess it. Let us sulk in quiet bitterness together.

On the first clue: You saw the puzzle and the solution as soon as you saw the barest outline of the setup. There are only so many overused puzzles, after all.

On the second or third clue: Either you've seen this one before, and you know what that clue automatically means, or you're very good at working out puzzles.

On the fourth clue: You either have seen this puzzle, but the other clues didn't jog your memory, or else you are quite resourceful.

On the fifth or sixth clue: You're solving this for the first time. Prepare to solve it many more times if you play adventure games much.

Didn't solve it: Oh, come on. It wasn't that hard.

-

A few games that use this puzzle, named as I remember them:

Zork 2 (I believe it was 2)
Lost in Time (Clever but needlessly baroque variation on the theme)
Anchorhead
Zork: Grand Inquisitor
Broken Sword 3
Sherlock Holmes: Case of the Rose Tattoo (I found this by Googling some key phrases, so to speak, and getting the walkthrough)
Dark Fall
Midnight Nowhere (Found by Googling another phrase)
Hugo 2: Whodunnit
And SO MANY MORE.

[TheYak]

That particular puzzle isn't just over-used, it's essentially useless; it's no longer a puzzle.    They may as well avoid wasting your time and just let you push open the door. 

I had an inkling as soon as you said cliché puzzle.  I was 90% certain after the first, and would've bet my mother's organs after the second.

You keep referencing Chrono-Trigger.  I can't help but agree, the game had a certain draw that the very similar FF games lacked.  Thank goodness for emulators, otherwise I would've missed out. 

There's another cliché plot device that I think relates to your "Forced" topic: Removing your inventory.  Occasionally it serves as a quick way to clean your character's pockets of useless items, but it'd be better to lose them after they've lost their usefulness.  It's similar to the death-of-a-loved-one device - after all, what are you more attached to in an adventure game than your inventory?  I weep everytime I'm thrown in a dungeon without my items and have to resort to using a crust of bread from a prison meal to attract a mouse whom I then train to fetch me the keys (it's more frequent than common sense would have you believe).   

[Wellington]

* The sad thing about the door puzzle is that it was once a good one. Zork 2 used it well. In a fantasy environment where you might conceivably run into a door with that security weakness, it was actually a very nice puzzle. But I've spent YEARS looking for doors with that security hole, and I've only found a few, in very old buildings.

I believe that puzzle is like a secret handshake between game designers and adventure gamers. It's often underclued, as it was in Dark Fall, so you have to know it in advance to solve it in some cases.

* Another super-cliché puzzle involves a door with a handprint/fingerprint scanner.

I don't need to say anymore, do I? Is this even a puzzle anymore?

* Yet another is the "I don't have a flathead screwdriver. All I have is what's in my wallet" puzzle. I'm guilty of this one in the one full-length adventure game I've written. It's a filler puzzle. Nobody has to think about it - not the player, not the designer.

* Chandeliers exist to be swung upon and/or dropped.

* A person with no experience in these matters can quickly open a supposedly secure lock or set of handcuffs with a hairpin or a credit card. It's EASY! This is why the police always remove a woman's hairpins when they arrest her, just in case!

* Reflective objects always reflect spells.

* Any trap found in a tomb will be operational after thousands of years, even if it requires continual resetting or perpetual motion. Gabriel Knight 3 has an INCREDIBLY bad case of this when it suddenly goes brain-dead in the endgame. To quote the comic Absurd Notions, the ancients were very clever with counterweights.

* Also, the ancients were very clever with chessboards.

* If there's a conversation menu in the "Choose an attitude" format, choose very carefully, since you can make bad mistakes. If it's in the "Choose a sentence" format, this is less likely. If it's in the "Choose a subject to ask about" format, you are required by adventure game law not only to be reckless, but to ask about every single topic. It's practically noninteractive.

* By the way, the ancients were ALSO very clever with levers and runes and wheels.

* But they never invented the safety deposit box.

* Either you can't die, or death is frequent and maybe a bit unfair.

* Prison cells contain straw beds and whatever else you need to set a distracting fire.

* Secret passages are frequently connected to not-so-secret triggers, like a candle or a book. You know, things that anybody dusting the room might stumble on. That's what makes them SUPER SECRET.

* If it's guarding a door and can't be bribed, fooled by disguise, distracted, or killed, it will have a riddle for you.

* People always tear off the top sheet of a memo pad after writing something on it. However, in order to be fair to you, the player, they press really hard with the pencil, so you know what to do.

* Vines exist to be swung from, fashioned into crude ropes, or both.

* You're wandering around the big city, and you need a screwdriver. The man who could loan you a screwdriver says he wants a squid-and-pickle sandwich. You must therefore find a squid and a pickle and bread. You cannot go to the hardware store and buy a screwdriver, because there is no hardware store you can visit in the entire big city. Anyway, you don't have money, even though you know people you could conceivably borrow from.

But even if you did have money, and could go to the hardware store, you wouldn't.

Because that man wants a squid-and-pickle sandwich, gosh darn it, and you're gonna get it to him come fire or flood or killer squid that resent being made into sandwich filling.

[Dambuilder]

* Secret passages are frequently connected to not-so-secret triggers, like a candle or a book. You know, things that anybody dusting the room might stumble on. That's what makes them SUPER SECRET.

*lol* I've got a vision: "The coincidental adventure of Harriet, the cleaning lady"! 

[TheYak]

* Another super-cliché puzzle involves a door with a handprint/fingerprint scanner.

I don't need to say anymore, do I? Is this even a puzzle anymore?

I don't know, it can actually be interesting still depending upon the method.  After all, there are several ways of getting past these things in real life.  As a puzzle, there are 3 fairly different paths to choose. 

* If there's a conversation menu in the "Choose an attitude" format, choose very carefully, since you can make bad mistakes. If it's in the "Choose a sentence" format, this is less likely. If it's in the "Choose a subject to ask about" format, you are required by adventure game law not only to be reckless, but to ask about every single topic. It's practically noninteractive.

This one's someone overused, the other half of the problem is laziness or lack of imagination.  After all, who wants to come up with / type / script in dozens of dialogue choices when you only need to get one peice of information from somebody?  (Lucasarts in many of there adventure games, and I still love 'em for it)

* If it's guarding a door and can't be bribed, fooled by disguise, distracted, or killed, it will have a riddle for you.

If it's not liquid, solid or gas, it's probably plasma.  Really, how many other options are there?  I despise the riddle thing unless it doesn't take itself seriously (as in HQ/QFG), but there are only so many ways to bypass a guard.  A better complaint of overuse would be the placing of the guard itself.   If it's in a logical and believeable placement, fine.  When it's guarding an arbitrary door that blocks a room containing a ball of yarn and a cat skeleton, it generates a needless puzzle. 

* People always tear off the top sheet of a memo pad after writing something on it. However, in order to be fair to you, the player, they press really hard with the pencil, so you know what to do.

While not a bad device since it works / is sometimes useful in the real world, it's very over-used.  I don't know what special techniques PCs have, but I can never make out more than a vague guesstimate of the tablet's prior contents. 

Now the screwdriver-type puzzle (hunts for miscellaneous objects in order to obtain an easily-attainable item) are over-used, annoying, and really remove the player from the game.  The game creator felt that I should run these random errands for him?  Great!  If these things must be used, for god's sake make the attaining of said objects entertaining or interesting in and of themselves, and at least make it something somewhat plausible (like a star-head screwdriver, you might not be able to find a jewler's 6-point star screwdriver at your local  hardware store.  You probably could but ~maybe~ not). 

It's bloody hard to come up with creative, imaginative, challenging puzzles by yourself.  That's why a good assortment is more often found in a team-based developing environment.  I think that in order to make a good game, people might have to rely less upon themselves and seek out at least a person or two to divulge their secrets to.  Sure, it'll ruin a potentially great game for a player, but that player might help make a truely mind-stimulating adventure.  Brainstorming often goes both ways, so what would be too coerced for one game, might make sense in another. 

[Wellington]

Three paths to the handprint/fingerprint puzzle?

I'm thinking of the most common one, which involves a dead guard, but there was one clever usage of a copied, fake handprint/fingerprint in a game I know of, and I suppose you could always go the Half-Life route and have somebody actually volunteer to open the door. But the common option is the cliché, and I probably should have been clearer about what I meant.

As for the ways to get past a guard? Sleeping gas in the vents hasn't been used too much, and it was handled nicely in a Star Trek game. Calling in on a guard's walkie-talkie or headset and pretending to be a superior is a nice one, though it might count as disguise. Turning yourself in, getting arrested and taken into the fortified location, and then escaping using a hidden gadget/trick/inside contact is my favorite, though.

Then there's something to be said for using stealth to avoid the guard altogether, in which case the guard becomes sort of a looming presence whom you don't deal with directly. And really, if I wanted to get into a building secretly, I would probably want to try every possible method that didn't show my face to the security personnel before approaching the guard. But no vents. Vents are overused. Wall-scaling and stealth are nicer, and King's Quest VI has a particularly neat variation on this in one of the two paths through its endgame.

I don't have anything against bribes, disguise, or distraction in general, but they're rarely pulled off really convincingly in games. The thrown rock style of distraction is incredibly risky and bribes are even riskier than rock throwing. Disguises are only good when the player isn't conveniently given a full uniform in his or her PC's clothing size by knocking out ANOTHER guard.

[TheYak]

Most of those options fall under the major categories though.. I was just categorizing too broadly I think.  If you make killing = incapacitating and the walkie-talkie = distraction, that only makes stealth and the last one different.  Stealth is either no challenge to the player or can be quite frustrating.  A blending of the two with some "*gasp* almost saw me!" moments might give it suspense without it being keyboard-bashing time.  I really like your latter option and it's used so seldom.  Seeing how it could work wonderfully with a dialogue from a previous encounter with an NPC/ally that gives you the information or promises to spring you is inspiring.  Throw in one of the clichés - not meant to bypass the guards but to make it less obvious that you're trying to get arrested and that'd be a pretty convincing, well-designed puzzle.

Three paths for the handprint puzzle: Sorry, was counting in my head and might've shared how I was tallying.  The first is usage of the actual person's hand (voluntarily or otherwise), the second is a facsimile, and the third was something I haven't seen in a game yet but works well for a single-user fingerprint ID for some brands of hardware: cup the peripheral in your hands and breathe out heavily into it, the water-vapor condenses around the previously-left oils and the device accepts it. 

It's even worked on a couple devices that claimed not to be fooled by non-conductive materials (i.e. latex, silly putty, etc.).  Put in a decent close-up animation so the player knows what's happening and give enough clues that it's not a try-everything puzzle and it'd work quite well.

The disguise option could be usable provided that the deus ex machina types that you've listed aren't there.  It'd actually be quite cool to have the PC steal janitorial outfits, perhaps sizing up the cleaning staff for fit first, maybe being rejected by the guards for having an obviously wrong fit.   

Bah, I think I'm nit-picking semantics really.  Your last list was quite complimentary to the first and are valid analyses of overwrought puzzling.