AGS ezine issue 5

[Ginny]

Heh, great issue Vel, that review was totally unexpected I must say you ovverated my game, heh

Anyway I was pretty sure that the article was satirical, but oh well:

Unskippable text

Only if the text is fast enough (not so good as some people read slower) or if it's adjustable. From my experience though, waiting for text to finish being dispalyed gets frustrating. If you want a pizza, pause the game
However, in games that have decent or even bareable voice acting, i tend to never skip text unless it's the global message being repeated, even if i've long before finished reading. With games like TLJ and Grim Fandango, I could listen to the characters saying the same thing over and over again and not get bored, cause the voice acting was so great.

About missing information, I find this can actually happen, or even not information but just text being missed. The solution to this isn't to make text unskippable though - it's, IMO, to allow the player to see a full transcript of the text. Suppose you forget something someone said a long time ago, like something important. Ideally you shouldn't forget, as good design is about drawing attention to important things, but if you do, you can look through the text. Or you can read it just for fun, also lengthening the game a bit if you look at it that way. Rewatching cutscenes is also a great idea, though in AGS games this is not quite as easy cause the cutscenes are mostly just animated sequences where the player has to wait, and that can be skipped by pressing Esc or something. if they were all avi or mpg files (or flc) then this would be easy.

Move player as slow as a slug

No, bad, I can't stand this, no walking animation is so awesome that I can watch it for hours.

Crappy GUI with lots of menus

Well, you contradict yourself, or kinda at last. A crappy GUI doesn't have to have lots of menus, and a GUI with lots of menus can be great. Making a crappy GUI on purpose is asking for trouble though.

Timed puzzles

I dunno, this could be fine as long as the player has something to do while he waits (and i don't mean playing with some intercative element, like a panel or something). I think the best way is to a) let the player know he's supposed to wait and provide him with lots of things to do like talking to someone, playing a little mini-game, or something else, like a bonus puzzle that isn't neccessary for finishing the game. 10-20 minutes should be the limit of this though.

Illogical puzzles

Whacky puzzles are good, illogical puzzles (like carve apple shape out of steel using hat) are bad.

Cool music

The best of them all . May I also add cool voice acting and sounns in the background. Graphics can also contribute to making a player just stare at the room for a short while.

No map

Well, I think it depends. If you have lots of locations (like Syberia) then a map is better. However sometimes a map can detract from immerdsin, unless it's a top view like in MI games, or just a map you have in your inventory. personally I think the player should be able to both use a map and walk through the scenery. Obviously he can't get into the kitchen of a restaurant by using the map, he just gets outside the restaurant, like in MI with major locations on the map.

Overall, I think length shouldn't be added artificially. the best way to make a game longer is to make it have more content in it, and be more interesting. Btw, games with high replay value can seem longer just because someone has played them through 12 times. Games using trick to add length will ultimately detract from length because playing them through once would be bad enough, not to mention replaying

All this isn't meaning to say i didn't like the article, it's really funny and started up a nice debate here too