What makes an adventure game Great...

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I've never been bothered by 'fair' deaths in games.  Take Quest for Glory as an example: you find a goblin, you fight the goblin.  You have three possible outcomes:

1.  You kill the goblin.

2.  You are killed by the goblin.

3.  You run away like a pansy.

Now, you can't make friends with the goblin, but aside from that you're given some good options.  Death depends on your own character skills (weapon/magic levels) and personal skills (grasp of the controls) and while you might be angry at dying you can't say the game didn't give you a chance.

I list this in stark contrast to some of Sierra's other games, most notably the earlier King's Quest games.  You can be walking along in the first game and die for a myriad reasons, many times without any kind of warning.  This is frustrating.  This is bad design.  I can't fathom why anyone apart from the most masochistic enjoyed the early King's Quest games, but enough people did that they made many more.

Death in games should either come from wanton negligence on the part of the player (wandering into a busy intersection or a puddle of bubbling green goo) or as a consequence of a fight.  It is possible that a player can be unaware that doing a certain thing is, in fact, dangerous, either because they've never encountered a situation like it or because your game is not presenting a real-world situation.  In either case, not explaining the situation in enough detail to understand the consequences is just shoddy design and is more likely to frustrate someone than to amuse them, especially if the death is tied to an obscure puzzle and they have to trial-and-error their way through multiple deaths to find a solution.  Tying death to a puzzle is something that should be done with careful planning.  Is it a timed sequence?  If so, do they have a reasonable enough time to figure out the solution on the first try if they are clever, or will they have to know exactly what to do to have enough time to do it?  If it's based on a complicated mechanical puzzle, is it designed logically enough that most people can figure it out without guessing?  These are important things to consider when factoring in death as a puzzle outcome.

[Layabout]

I've never been bothered by 'fair' deaths in games.  Take Quest for Glory as an example: you find a goblin, you fight the goblin.  You have three possible outcomes:

1.  You kill the goblin.

2.  You are killed by the goblin.

3.  You run away like a pansy.

Now, you can't make friends with the goblin, but aside from that you're given some good options.  Death depends on your own character skills (weapon/magic levels) and personal skills (grasp of the controls) and while you might be angry at dying you can't say the game didn't give you a chance.

I list this in stark contrast to some of Sierra's other games, most notably the earlier King's Quest games.  You can be walking along in the first game and die for a myriad reasons, many times without any kind of warning.  This is frustrating.  This is bad design.  I can't fathom why anyone apart from the most masochistic enjoyed the early King's Quest games, but enough people did that they made many more.

Death in games should either come from wanton negligence on the part of the player (wandering into a busy intersection or a puddle of bubbling green goo) or as a consequence of a fight.  It is possible that a player can be unaware that doing a certain thing is, in fact, dangerous, either because they've never encountered a situation like it or because your game is not presenting a real-world situation.  In either case, not explaining the situation in enough detail to understand the consequences is just shoddy design and is more likely to frustrate someone than to amuse them, especially if the death is tied to an obscure puzzle and they have to trial-and-error their way through multiple deaths to find a solution.  Tying death to a puzzle is something that should be done with careful planning.  Is it a timed sequence?  If so, do they have a reasonable enough time to figure out the solution on the first try if they are clever, or will they have to know exactly what to do to have enough time to do it?  If it's based on a complicated mechanical puzzle, is it designed logically enough that most people can figure it out without guessing?  These are important things to consider when factoring in death as a puzzle outcome.

On the note of Kings Quest, it was probably lack of competition on PC that allowed games with bad game design to flourish. In all honesty, playing KQ5 makes you wonder how the game didn't kill the genre, let alone the series. I don't understand why I enjoyed playing that game as a kid. There are 41 ways to die in the game, some obvious, most without warning. This is not including the walking deads that are rather abundant in the game.

This video demonstrates the horror.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vOn5D0XE9U

[DazJ]

This might not make sense to some but to those who DO understand, I'm sure you'll agree with me, even if you didn't realise it before:

Adventures set at sunset/dusk really create a good sense of fun and adventure. I think this was actually the Secret of Monkey Island. Have a good think about how Melée Island was such a fun first chapter to play. It really had that 'feel' about it.