What Makes an Adventure Game Compelling

[BStoltman]

I am in the process of writing a script for a game I have wanted to create for many years now. I have always been a huge fan of the King's Quest's, Quest for Glory's, and my favorite Gabriel Knight. Now I know what makes a game just absolutely amazing to me. But...

1. What makes an adventure game absolutely amazing to you.

2. What makes an adventure blow beyond all belief to you.

Please be as descriptive as you can; Any other comments are welcome, as a writer I must get in touch w/ the people I am trying to give a thrill to.

Thanks for your time!

[Nikolas]

I can understand your need/will to make a brilliant game, but take care that it takes A LOT of effort, especially if it's a free project. If it's your first game, I could suggest that you start of with something a bit smaller. Now to answer your questions and explain further:

1. Everything. It's the combination of things. I'm not the guy that will concetrate on a sole part of an adventure and don't care about the rest. If you're looking for the absolutely amazing adventure for me then:
i. it needs to have amazing graphics
ii. Great audio
iii. If there is voice acting it needs to be very good - professional
iv. Gameplay, flawless with great ideas, puzzles that range from inventory based, to random, to tile puzzles, to labyrinths, to exploring, to dialogue based. Everything.
v. A story that is compelling, absolutely marvelous with plenty of twists and surprises and a deeper meaning than being "just a game".
vi. Replayability. I played the game but want to play it again, cause there are many things I've not discovered yet. Different endings, different parts, different characters.
vii. Deep and well thought characters and the world they live in. I want to "live" with the characters not just play and move them around. I want to suffer when they suffer, and rejoice when they are happy.

2. Same as above. Why 2 questions with the same meaning?

Now, as you can understand if you strive to do all of the above yourself you will suffer another 20 years making 1 game in AGS. There's no way 1 man can make all of the above. You need a team. And teams, although not impossible and I'm in various teams right now, when the project is free, it's rather difficult to hang on.

But of course there have been MANY examples of amazing adventures, commercial or not, AGS or not. It's not impossible. Just takes really A LOT of effort...

Good luck with your game

[BStoltman]

Thanks for the tips, they are all great things to keep in mind. As far as my project/game, it is still in scripting/writing phase. I don't intend to create this by myself, eventually I will have to get a team together to create this. I am not an artist by any means, and to make a great game you need someone who is an expert in specific areas. I am a writer and programmer this is where I excel, try to make me draw or compose music and the game would end there.

This game will be at least 6 months if not more... before I even think of converting it into AGS, and I am already playing w/ it and learning the in's and out's of AGS. I will end up compiling a test game, that will not be release or have anything to do w/ my game, it will basically end up a mishmosh of all the features I can think of being implemented in way just so I know how to do them.

Keep the tips coming, Even though most of the ideas are obvious, Its nice to be able to reference this forum, and be reminded what makes a game great, so that when a person is writing, he doesn't get to caught up in the writing that he/she forgets what is fun.

Thanks

[Babar]

I'll name no names, but I find many games have the curious quality to 'blow beyond all belief', while others, which may be technically better do not do this. I don't have any idea why, but I'd like to find out. There are several (fairly minor) ags games that I enjoyed immensely, despite their non-awesomeness in many departments: a few of the maniac mansion games, some RONs, Just Another Point 'n Click Adventure, an OROWC game called 'balloonface', The Winter Rose, etc.

What I think, is that you shouldn't make a game that is 'fake' to you. In efforts to make a game 'adult' and 'sophisticated' by adding flashiness, gimmicks, "mystery" (ie. gore), epicness, tacked on jokes, etc., it more often than not ends up seeming cheesy or pretentious and mundane.

For me, I don't need everything (great graphics, great music, great gameplay...) to have the game be absolutely amazing. Just find what you are good at, and explode with that, while SERIOUSLY PUTTING IN EFFORT in the other parts of the game. A game needs only 1 thing to excel in to blow your mind.

[blueskirt]

Would you mind to define "blow beyond all belief"? I asked its meaning to 3 different persons and they each told me a different answer.

[Doctor Oakroot]

For me, a great story and game play/puzzles that make sense in the context of the story. I started out on over-the-table RPGs and pre-commercial text based games, so nice graphics are a nice add on, but not essential to me.

On the con side... game play that requires illogical actions, i.e., makes no sense in the story context, graphics that are so bad that I'd rather it be a text game.

That's about it.

[Radiant]

In no particular order,

* Non-linearity, and the ability to "play around" in the game without having to follow some set path
* Atmosphere, mostly based on the style of graphics and music
* Details, including animations
* Alternative solutions
* and a blue cup that helps you out

[MrColossal]

Would you mind to define "blow beyond all belief"? I asked its meaning to 3 different persons and they each told me a different answer.

Suck terribly. Be really bad.

Not "blow your mind" as some people seem to think.

[Babar]

* Some people have turned red with embarrassment

[Nikolas]

Some people think exactly the same as Babar

[MrColossal]

Still, you could just ask the one question and take the inverse of "what makes a game good" and apply that to "what makes a game bad" so everyone wins!

[space boy]

I can understand your need/will to make a brilliant game, but take care that it takes A LOT of effort, especially if it's a free project. If it's your first game, I could suggest that you start of with something a bit smaller.

I don't agree. Start big, be ambitious and see where your limits are. And most of all don't worry about time. If there is something that can kill a promising game then it's time constraints.

Also: First impress yourself, then impress others.

[sharksweetheart]

1.
~ Professional looking graphics alone won't make a game for me, but it certainly gives a good first impression and I am much more likely to buy/download it in the first place if it looks snappy!
~ Originality. Again, just because something is unique doesn't mean it's good, but it will make it stick in my mind more, instead of just falling onto the ever growing pile of randy pirates, noble knights and sly investigators.
~ Good humour. This is a risky one, because not everybody is going to identify with your humour, and if you see list #2 you'll know it can completely ruin a game if not executed well. However, if done right it can make the game. You'll notice that most of the greatest adventures are funny (Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, etc). A lot of nerds/gamers tend to go for a dry sarcastic wit, but that kind of humour is very common, so it would be nice to see something new.
~ Depth, length, immersion. I'm actually not that into puzzles, the main thing I enjoy about adventure games is exploration, which really just means admiring the art and reading every single line of dialog I can find. I crawl through the puzzles just so I can get to the next area and explore some more. I've noticed in a lot of games, you start of in some huge area, but as you progress the new areas get smaller, and smaller, and smaller, which is pretty disappointing. I'd like to see a game where as you progress, you uncover BIGGER areas!

2.
~ As mentioned above, humour alone can destroy a game for me. I couldn't play Discworld simply because I thought the dialog was lame. Same goes for bad games that take themselves too seriously, though if it's done right that could turn into some kind of B-game which could be awesome.
~ Lack of direction. I don't like it when I'm thrown into a scenario with know explanation as to why the hell I'm here and what I'm supposed to be doing. This only really works in horror games, preferably for a short time as a prologue, so you do get an explanation eventually.
~ In addition to the above, this applies to puzzles, too. So I need the key to open that door? Well okay, I guess that means I must take this shoelace and lather it in tomato sauce and hang it from the lampshade to create a distracting odour so I can sneak past the kangaroo and push a secret 1px panel on the other side of the room which reveals a cavern in the kangaroo's anus which I must crawl inside of and using my HUGE MOTHERFUCKING AXE to remove the golden worm then I must rub the worm on the tomato soaked shoelace so that it transforms into a key which unlocks the door, when I could have just as easily used that HUGE MOTHERFUCKING AXE to break through. Just because a puzzle is hard, doesn't mean it is good!
~ Unrecognisable graphics. Usually I'm not fussy with graphics so long as they do the job and the rest of the game is above par, but it's no fun getting stuck on a puzzle simply because you had no idea that brown lump of shit in the corner was supposed to be a door.
~ Challenging GUIs. I find it excruciating when I have to reselect the "Look" action because it resets every time I click on something. Admittedly I have been able to enjoy games with this, but it is an unnecessary chore. Also on one game I played, instead of hovering over the area to find hotspots, you have to click once to activate them, and click a second time to use an action, which pretty much results in blind pixel hunting (in addition to this it also resets every time).
~ OOPS YOU DIED START AGAIN. I favour LucasArts over Sierra mostly for this. Every other room some evil witch or robot delivers an inescapable death and I have to start over. I was able to put up with it in Leisure Suit Larry because the deaths were funny, but I just closed the window in other games.

[BStoltman]

These are all great reminders. Sharksweetheart you stole my idea for a puzzle. I was so gonna have a kangaroo and tomato sauce to get to the anus of the kangaroo.

And yes Mr. Colossal is correct when he said I mention blows beyond all belief as being. A bad game experience, perhaps this game looked awesome in screenshots, and the story seemed compelling at first but as you got into it further you realized that it just wasn't put together correctly.

Keep the comments coming, This information isn't just beneficial to me but all people who are considering designing/writing an adventure game. The more people who something stated the more they will take that advice to heart. Perhaps through this thread we can get a higher quality level on all/most AGS games. "Not to say the quality level isn't good now, but there is always room for improvement".

Thanks

[Radiant]

Oh, the second question is what makes a bad game? Okay, this time not at all in random order.

1.Poor controls. Simply put, if a game has poor controls I'll ditch it within ten minutes. I'll name several examples if people want me to, the prime instance is being too lazy to implement keyboard controls for a LucasArts or VerbCoin GUI.

2.Poor humor. A game need not be humorous, but if it tries to be, it had better not fall flat. Although this is a matter of taste, imo anything resembling Larry entirely fails at funny. Another bad example is the endgame of KQIV - it is an excellent game most of the time, and not at all humorous, but for some reason they felt the need to make the climatic scene funny. And it fails at that.

3.Poor puzzles. It's okay if things don't make sense in advance, but you have this "OOH, I should have thought of that!" after completing it (e.g. the infamous Monkey Wrench puzzle from MI2). It is not okay if, after completing the puzzle, you wonder why the hell you were doing that.

4.Poor limitations. Telling the player "you can't do that" for no good reason is bad game design. A simple example is inventory items that you're only allowed to pick up if your character knows what you need them for. Another example is disallowing something that is logical, because it was not the solution the designer intended.

5.Poor voice acting, which in my opinion includes 95% of all voice acting - but I'll simply turn it off.

[BStoltman]

My memory is a bit hazy, but what was suppose to be funny at the end of KQIV. I don't remember anything even attempting humor, but then again I haven't play or beaten it in many years now.

Thanks

[TheJBurger]

1. What makes an adventure game absolutely amazing to you.
a. Good production values and a good atmosphere - This doesn't necessarily mean amazing graphics, sound, or music. This means consistent style with good detail. Pleughburg doesn't necessarily have "amazing" graphics but they have detailed, consistent graphics. Wrap it around with tons of character animations and a good soundtrack and I'm happy to play in a believable atmosphere. The key here is effort I think.
b. Innovation - I admit I'm bored of Walk, Eye, Hand, Mouth. Sometimes it's fun to have other things in adventure games (parsers, new verbs, trust meters, etc).
c. Story - A well told story will complement the gameplay, and vice versa. When they mesh together perfectly, it's a great gameplay and storytelling experience.

2. What makes an adventure terrible beyond all belief to you.
a. Mundane puzzle design - When puzzles constantly fall into fetch/trade quests and fixing broken wires and unlocking doors in odd manners. Yes, I am a hypacrite.
b. Breaking the 4th wall when it's unncessary - I used to think it was funny to break the 4th wall. But the more I did it, and the more I saw other people do it, the more I got tired of it.
c. Unclear goals - When I sit down to play an adventure game, I need a motivation to play it through. Usually it's the story or the introduction that will encourage me to go on. But if there's hardly any motivation, it makes it even worse when the game starts me with no clear goals, and I'm left wandering around. All I feel like I'm doing then is wasting my time.

There are probably so many exceptions that I break my own rules all the time. 

[Radiant]

My memory is a bit hazy, but what was suppose to be funny at the end of KQIV.

Spoiler

When shot, Lolotte starts quoting the Wizard of Oz, then does a double-take and says "oops, wrong story".

[close]

Spoiler

Also, the Star Trek cameo.

[close]

[Nikolas]

I can understand your need/will to make a brilliant game, but take care that it takes A LOT of effort, especially if it's a free project. If it's your first game, I could suggest that you start of with something a bit smaller.

I don't agree. Start big, be ambitious and see where your limits are. And most of all don't worry about time. If there is something that can kill a promising game then it's time constraints.

Also: First impress yourself, then impress others.

I somehow feel that you are confusing doing a good/great job to what you do (no matter how big), and starting out big/huge.

someone doesn't have to start alone to a 70 BG game to realise that it's difficult (not impossible though) to not make it.

Regarding time: Sure everyone's got time with free projects, and there is no release date, but have you ever considered that someone might get tired after 7 (for example) years on working on a game? It is a very realistic danger...

[GarageGothic]

My main advice would be to play a lot of adventures - good and bad - and note what you like and dislike about it. Of course it's impossible to just patch together a good game out of the best elements from you favorite titles, but learning from the mistakes of others is a sure way of avoiding the most obvious pitfalls.
I'm a professional game reviewer and tend to be very picky about anything that annoys or bores me in a game. But instead of just criticising flaws, I come up with solutions for them and implement those into my own game. An example from an otherwise great game is the slow walking and poorly marked exits in Ben Jordan 6. Even as I was playing it, I started up AGS, loaded my game in progress and scripted a number of improvements to the existing code to identify exits, as well as writing an entire module to handle cursor highlighting on the edges of scrolling rooms.

Also play non-adventures - often they are much better games than current adventures, mainly because modern adventure games are developed for a hardcore audience of conservative genre afficionados. A lot of replies to this thread have emphasised non-linearity which is an area where we could certainly learn from games like GTA, Hitman and Deus Ex. Non-linearity isn't mainly about shaping the story based on the players choices, it's about offering him enough choices to make the game world real and interesting (for instance, I find the idea replayability misunderstood and highly overrated - you replay a game because it's good, not to see the alternate ending - and always thought the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade a much more satisfying experience than Fate of Atlantis).