Your favourite interfaces.

[KodiakBehr]

Do you believe there is a preferred interface-design, and if so, why?

My last game was a two-verb coin: "Look" and "Interact".  I was contemplating going further in my next title to have object interactions and observations to be one and the same verb, moving from a verb-coin to a one-click-does-all design.  I'm worried that this might limit the depth of some of the puzzles to pixel-hunts, which seems to turn off a lot of the adventure-game crowd, which is small-enough as it is.

Your thoughts?

[Radiant]

I've used a one-click interface in several games (e.g. Warthogs, Quest for Yrolg), and it's worked out pretty well for me.

[Igor Hardy]

My favorite interfaces are parsers, SCUMM and the complex context menus of Return to Zork. Verbcoins can be pretty cool too.

From the player's POV I'm not very fond of one-click or two-verb interfaces - they're very limiting. From teh designer's standpoint they have the great benefit, however, that it's damn faster to make/write a game with such a simple interface. And the primitiveness can be slightly compensated by putting additional verbs together into the inventory as though they were items.