What makes an adventure game Great...

[TerranRich]

Deaths aren't bad in adventure games. I think Space Quest 6 handled them quite well... the "Retry" button brought you to the point just before you died, so you could try again without having to restart or restore. That's the middle ground, and while dying in SQ6 was not just something to shrug off, it didn't kill the mood of the game either.

[Anian]

Being helpless also greatly help. Give me big guns and smooth responsive controls and I'll just blast my way through anything spooky. Give me no weapon, or weapons bundled with clunky control schemes and I'll certainly think twice everytime an enemy appears.

So, survival horror, like Silent hill etc.? But that's kinda been done already, I think. Plus it lacks a bit of the "adventure" part and to me it seems more stealth oriented...genere mixing doesn't have to be bad thing, but it usually leads to not being a good enough adventure (ie too simplistic puzzles) or good enough horror.

Deaths aren't bad in adventure games. I think Space Quest 6 handled them quite well... the "Retry" button brought you to the point just before you died, so you could try again without having to restart or restore. That's the middle ground, and while dying in SQ6 was not just something to shrug off, it didn't kill the mood of the game either.

What's the point of a Retry button? It turns into a guessing game with every step you take. We're back on the topic of deaths again, I see.
Arbitrary deaths suck, I mean you might as well put a random event while solving a puzzle or just standing - "you we're hit by a bus while crossing the street" or "too bad you just died of a heart attack", what the hell is the point of that, it's not fun and it's serves apsolutely no purpose.
But even if death is totally possible, like you see a bear and decide to "use rock on bear", of course the bear is gonna get mad and kill you, right? Well you could miss, you could stun the bear, but if it is a game where you can die, the bear will probably eat you...no imagination there.
And the middle of the road things are the most annoying, like in Broken sword 1

Spoiler

if you exit outside of the hotel with the scripture those two guys will kill you, that's just annoying, why not make it so George can't get out of the hotel by saying something (but make it so you can go out anyway, I guess)...no, you're just supposed to remember those two guys being there after spending an hour in that hotel trying to get into the room...

[close]

They might kill you, but on the other hand they might not. (although BS has about the best balance of death events and is not that annoying)

In theory threats are recognisable, but if you're playing an sf game or a fantasy, how the hell are you suppose to know what will happen for sure? I mean you might throw a rock at the bear and then he just responds to you "Why did you do that? That wasn't very nice." instead of killing you. A shady character is in a dark alley, you go to talk to him and then he kills you...on the other hand he might try to sell you stolen watches, you can't know and of course in real life you wouldn't even try to talk but that's why you are playing a game. Or Kings quest V where

Spoiler

you have to save a rodent from a cat so it can rescue you later...but it's a timed event so you might not even notice that happening...

[close]

so you have to play it over and over till everything fits togheter, that's just guess and it doesn't make a game great by any means.

Do you really want to make a player save game at every screen before leaving the screen or make the player forget about saving cause he/she is really hooked and is having fun?

[TerranRich]

There's a difference between pointless deaths caused by walking deads, and deaths that make sense. I agree that throwing the rock at the bear would cause in death, but that's because you wouldn't throw a rock at a bear for obvious reasons... unless it was hinted at, and is therefore the solution to a puzzle. There are many things to consider.

[Tijne]

What's the point of a Retry button? It turns into a guessing game with every step you take.

I've been trained through games like Kings Quest to save before / after doing.. well.. most everything. xD..
A "Retry" button is so that we can still have games where bad decisions get you killed, but it doesn't stop new players who haven't been trained in such a way from playing, and it doesn't make you do everything else over again when you only made one silly mistake.  It just tells you "That last decision? Yeah, that... that wasn't smart..."  .  It can do so in humorous manners, and death-messages can even hint to a possible solution.

There are several games that are.. er.. unforgiving... ......like Kings Quest V...... but the.. erm..  ..annoyances... makes the game feel more rewarding when you finally pass it.  Kings Quest V, as an example includes visual and verbal hints upon most obscure deaths; so even though you have to suffer from the deaths, you can still eventually figure it out on your own more easily than you could figure out a really difficult or obscure puzzle -- or figuring out you've reached a dead-end.  What am I trying to say... hmm.. It keeps the difficulty of the game high, without actually stopping people from playing.  It allows a more rewarding end through perserverance.



I particularly like games where I feel like I've accomplished something in the end. ^_^

[Anian]

There's a difference between pointless deaths caused by walking deads, and deaths that make sense. I agree that throwing the rock at the bear would cause in death, but that's because you wouldn't throw a rock at a bear for obvious reasons... unless it was hinted at, and is therefore the solution to a puzzle. There are many things to consider.

A difference? Between death when you forgot to take something in some scene and when you try to explore and adventure, so what if you missed a hint, is that then walking dead or "death that makes sense." So what you are saying you always start an adventure game by not touching absolutley anything unless specifically told to...which kind of makes me wander how to start off a game? And I must reffer you to my example in case you are in a fantasy world and ie the bear can actually talk or something like that...
It's not real life, it's a game, an adventure, you wouldn't go into a haunted house if you saw a ghost at the window but still in some game you must...death by some hinted rules is silly.

@Tijne:
Again, as said before, that last decision was wrong, ie you pressed conversation option A instead of B...so you press Retry and then you're in the same conversation but then you select option B...there's absolutly no point in that, it's still guess work except now it just takes more time.
For me, the part you have to repeat must be very enertaining otherwise it's a chore and I have those in real life thank you. Adventure games are not very good at making every passthrough different and even less when the the time you passthrough is a minute...again, seems tom, it's annoying. Few games manage to pull it off, I liked Broken sword, which most of the time told you not to run into a man with a gun...most of the time. Orient express ie let you repeat the fight scenes, I don't mind that that much, that's desirable even, cause it keeps the tension but still isn't too annoying, but again it technically changes the genre at that point (to a reflex game).

[Vince Twelve]

I've written bunches about my opinion of adventure game deaths but I want to restate them here and see if you agree with them, Anian, since you seem so devoutly, religiously, opposed to adventure game deaths.

Basically, I postulate that adventure games are not always bad, though they have been grossly misused by some games in the past.  I further contend that used appropriately, they can heighten the tension of a game and provide more of a connection between player and character.

So, here are the three ideal rules for adventure game deaths:

1) Adequate communication of peril.

The player must be able to recognize a situation as one that would be lethal to the character.  This may be communicated by having it be obvious peril such as a pool of water with electricity running through it, which logically would lead to serious injury or death.  The player will know to avoid this until the peril is averted (electricity turned off) or find an alternative route.

Alternatively, if the peril is not obvious, such as a security system on an alien ship, it can be communicated by example: a fly buzzes down the corridor, and as it passes near the detection sensors, it gets zapped by a laser beam and falls to the floor in ashes.  The player will know that he cannot walk down that corridor until the security alarm is deactivated.

If the player is in a timed puzzle that will result in death upon failure, it must be clear that there is a limited time to complete the objective in addition to it being clear that failure will result in death.  Ideally, there should be something to allow the player to know how much time is left.  In Resonance, there is a scene where someone is breaking down a locked door that you're hiding behind.  You have only so much time to escape before this person will kill you.  To communicate the fact that the puzzle is timed, the door slowly becomes more and more broken.  Pieces of wood splinter, the door shakes more and more violently, small holes open up.  This also gives you somewhat of an idea of how much time is left because you can guess when that door is about to give.  Of course, I must also be careful to give enough time so as to be fair to the player, but that's a whole other topic.

If the peril is not adequately communicated, then the game becomes an exercise in frustration.  If there are two doors, and walking through one of them will get you killed by a guy with a flamethrower, and there was no indication that that might happen, I'm quitting your game.

2) Consistency in character mortality

If a character can die in the game, then any perilous situation can cause death.  Do not let the player roll through the whole game without any consequence in the face of grave danger and then suddenly hit him with a sudden death near the end.  This will lead to players getting complacent in their saving and then getting really pissed when they have to replay a huge portion of the game.  If death is possible, it should be possible from the beginning of the game.

One kink in this is that it's difficult to communicate to the player that the character is mortal and could die in the game before the first time the character actually dies.  You could put a warning right at the start that says "The characters can die in this game, save early, save often." but that breaks the mood and kind of sucks.  I'm not sure the best way to inform the player that death is possible, but one way would be to have several ways for the character to die right near the start of the game, so that when the player discovers the character's mortality, he doesn't need to replay too much.

3) Punishment for death proportional to means of failure

This one is the hardest because it's not something built into most adventure games.  Usually, if the player dies, he had better hope he had a recent save to go back to.  The punishment in this case is that the player has to replay everything after his last save. 

Using this means of punishing the player for failure, players who don't save often are punished more severely than players who save after every action.  Since I see the process of saving the game to be a process outside the game, I don't see this as fair punishment.  In other words, I want to punish people who play the game poorly more than people who play the game well but made a mistake, but I don't think that a person who saves frequently is playing the game better than a person who rarely saves.

One possible way to punish people differently for poor play would be to have that "Try again" button, but have it take you back farther in the game if you died by doing something that would be considered bad gameplay like "use fork on electrical outlet" than it would if you died failing at a task that was very difficult like defusing a time bomb within a very short time.  However, I still don't think this is quite right, since playing or replaying your game shouldn't really be a punishment... it should be fun.

I made a system in Resonance to address this third point.  I'm not sure how well it will be received by players, but I have high hopes.  While playing the game, you get points for doing good things (exploring, solving alternate puzzles, etc) up to a maximum of 99 points.  So once you have 99, you can't get any more.  And when you die in the game, it subtracts a number of points, and then lets you try again at a point just before you died, so you don't have to replay much, but you do lose points.  If you try again and die again, you'll lose more points and try yet again.  If you run out of points, then game over.  You'll have to go back to a previous save.

Other than losing points, there's no penalty for dying.  And since you can only have a max of 99 points, and you can get much more than that in the game, you might as well use them.  Bad gameplay (stick fork in electric socket) would lose more points than failing at something difficult, of course, making it more likely that you'll get a game over if you play poorly.  At that point it falls back upon the old save game.

So, basically it just provides a little extra challenge and tension (over a game with no death) without making you feel like you have to be constantly saving.  Plus, poor or stupid gameplay gets punished more harshly than simple mistakes or failure at difficult tasks.

For players who don't like the system, they can choose between 1) This point/rewind system, 2) Infinite rewind, no points system, and 3) No rewind, die->reload, classic adventure system. So hopefully everybody can find a way they like to play the game.  That's how I'm approaching the topic of death.  I'm not saying it's the best way, but it's the solution that I came up with for satisfying all three of the ideals I listed above.

Thoughts?

[Joseph]

What do you think of this as a solution?

I was thinking of warnings, such as if the player clicks on the outlet with his fork, a message goes "that wouldnt be wise"....the player ignores this, and does it anyways.

i say, in this istance, the player deserves to die!

There is also the "autosave" feature...you could implement that in the game so every 5 minutes or so it autosaves to a directory of your choosing...and done in the background. That way its not annoying for the player to manually save the game himself, and you get to keep your death scenes.

[Vince Twelve]

Yeah, I would definitely say that some warnings like that could help the "adequate communication of peril" if it wasn't possible to make it clear that there's danger.  If the player clicked twice on the outlet with the fork, yeah, I would definitely say that some barbecue was in order!

And yeah, autosaving has been used in a bunch of games.  I usually see it saving at the start of certain events or based on the player entering a new area.  I can't think of any games that just saved every five minutes, though.  There might be an issue with that though, for example if there was a timed puzzle like defusing a bomb, and you were two seconds before the bomb blows up with no chance of finishing and then the autosave kicks in, so when you die and reload, you'd just die again with no chance of saving yourself.  So, you would have to be careful with a timed autosave, turning it off in certain situations, but it could probably be used to good effect.  I still think that the first two ideals I discussed need to be followed at all times, even with an autosave, though.

[Igor Hardy]

What do you think of this as a solution?

I was thinking of warnings, such as if the player clicks on the outlet with his fork, a message goes "that wouldnt be wise"....the player ignores this, and does it anyways.

i say, in this istance, the player deserves to die!

In my game Frantic Franko if you hear "that wouldn't be wise" or "that would be dangerous" you definitely need to try that specific action again. Even if in hope of watching a death scene. You probably won't die! But you can of course save the game beforehand if you truly feel endangered.

[TerranRich]

What do you think of this as a solution?

I was thinking of warnings, such as if the player clicks on the outlet with his fork, a message goes "that wouldnt be wise"....the player ignores this, and does it anyways.

i say, in this istance, the player deserves to die!

There is also the "autosave" feature...you could implement that in the game so every 5 minutes or so it autosaves to a directory of your choosing...and done in the background. That way its not annoying for the player to manually save the game himself, and you get to keep your death scenes.

This was done to some extent in Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. If you touched a control panel once, it would give you a little zap and verbal warning. A second time would cause a more severe zap and another warning. A third time meant fair game, and the player would be killed. (Actually, it was a redshirt security guard, but same idea.)

I like that idea actually. One warning should be enough, then after that, perma-death (i.e. you gotta restore a saved game to continue after death).

Vince Twelve, your idea is brilliant. It's almost like you're purchasing death re-tries.

[TheJBurger]

2) Consistency in character mortality

If a character can die in the game, then any perilous situation can cause death.  Do not let the player roll through the whole game without any consequence in the face of grave danger and then suddenly hit him with a sudden death near the end.  This will lead to players getting complacent in their saving and then getting really pissed when they have to replay a huge portion of the game.  If death is possible, it should be possible from the beginning of the game.

One kink in this is that it's difficult to communicate to the player that the character is mortal and could die in the game before the first time the character actually dies.  You could put a warning right at the start that says "The characters can die in this game, save early, save often." but that breaks the mood and kind of sucks.  I'm not sure the best way to inform the player that death is possible, but one way would be to have several ways for the character to die right near the start of the game, so that when the player discovers the character's mortality, he doesn't need to replay too much.

While I see the merits of this, I think you have to be careful about letting players die early in the game. If the chance for failure is so high in an early scene, players may give up for losing so often and being unable to find the correct solution.

One example I can think of is in Pleurghburg. In that game, I don't think you could die until the very end of the first day. However, at the night scene on the docks I probably died upwards of seven times until I found the correct solution. If that scene was at the very beginning of the game, I may as well just have quit the game in frustration for failing so many times. However, since it was put later in the beginning, I had an incentive to keep trying and figure out more of the story despite my failure.

[Vince Twelve]

Great point J!

[Igor Hardy]

Warnings before death annoy me to be honest. As a player I like to experiment with everything new, experience everything there is. Warnings are just an additional temptation, and when my character dies it doesn't make me happier that I didn't heed them. Actually in those moments I'm hearing the game designer in my mind telling me: "Didn't I tell ya?" - not particularly pleasant.

Also, such warnings are easy to forget while you keep looking intensely for a way to progress forward - happened many times to me.

[Dualnames]

I say warnings before death are good, mostly to exactly say what I mean, I like deaths that you somehow say "Damn I knew I was bound to die." instead of dying without figuring it out. I hate being warned multiple dies though.

Dead ENDS:
I'm not the man who loves dead-ends, but they somehow really make the world of a game feel more alive..in a way. I actually have two difficulty modes,  easy mode  disables dead-ends in HHGTG.

Yeah, I would definitely say that some warnings like that could help the "adequate communication of peril" if it wasn't possible to make it clear that there's danger.  If the player clicked twice on the outlet with the fork, yeah, I would definitely say that some barbecue was in order!

And yeah, autosaving has been used in a bunch of games.  I usually see it saving at the start of certain events or based on the player entering a new area.  I can't think of any games that just saved every five minutes, though.  There might be an issue with that though, for example if there was a timed puzzle like defusing a bomb, and you were two seconds before the bomb blows up with no chance of finishing and then the autosave kicks in, so when you die and reload, you'd just die again with no chance of saving yourself.  So, you would have to be careful with a timed autosave, turning it off in certain situations, but it could probably be used to good effect.  I still think that the first two ideals I discussed need to be followed at all times, even with an autosave, though.

Your post really freaked me out, I explain the autosave feature I have on HHGTG on the readme with the same example of the bomb.

I say go with a "autosave based on proper things done" and really nevermind the "time autosave".

[Anian]

Wow, Vince, that's a lot of work to go into just the saving part of the game, but that makes it even better. Yeah, I wouldn't mind that system at all.

In the end, although I wouldn't call them difficulty settings just modes or something, this "with dead end" and "without dead ends" options.

@Ascovel: but aren't does warnings, just the thing that makes you explore? When you know (not so it says in the game, but at the end you kind of get it) you'll be warned in diverese ways (although it doesn't always have to be a direct warning, it can also be like Vince said - communication by example).

It's all a matter of masking it properly, it's more work, but it still enables you to die if you're not careful. They say in writing you have to show and not tell.
John was happy he got away with murder. --> In the end John just smirked as he was exiting the courtroom. Supid example, but I think the point comes across.  

[Scarab]

There might be an issue with that though, for example if there was a timed puzzle like defusing a bomb, and you were two seconds before the bomb blows up with no chance of finishing and then the autosave kicks in, so when you die and reload, you'd just die again with no chance of saving yourself. 

You can get around this though; in some games if you die three times after a checkpoint is reloaded, then it loads the previous one, and so forth. I think the Halo games use this, although I'm not sure.

[Wesray]

For me death in adventure games can give the game more urgency and tension. But of course it depends on the type of game. In comical adventures like DOTT or Sam&Max I wouldn't expect or want deaths.

But in more serious affairs, e.g. detective games where you are chasing some murderer, or in some horror games, I often feel the threat of possible death raises the stakes and makes me feel more involved. Games like Gabriel Knight 1 and Black Mirror used deaths very effectively in my opinion.

Other than that, strong characters and a gripping story are very important to me in adventure games. I also love historical background information and well written dialogs. So while I enjoy the odd funny adventure game, it's the more serious ones that are my favourites.

[Mr Flibble]

I'd like to place a warning on the use of "Be careful you could die here" notices in games.

In The Neverhood there's an area with three big signs that you can read from far away which tell you not to go to that area or you will die. Being stuck, I eventually try going there. And I die.

But it didn't seem unreasonable for me to try, I was expecting the signs to be a trick and entrance to the area to be necessary for completing the game. Like when a supervillain hides their top secret plans behind a door which says BEWARE OF THE INSTANT DEATH SNAKES, the player mightn't go in. But it was all a trick and they should have done. I think this can be avoided by having the player character themselves say that it'd be a stupid thing to do to jam that fork in the socket, or by having it said by a reliable narrator.

However, the problem with THAT is that, once the players get a funny response to trying something lethal, they'll do it again and push their luck.

[Wesray]

However, the problem with THAT is that, once the players get a funny response to trying something lethal, they'll do it again and push their luck.

Though I have to add that dying every possible way in an adventure game is a badge of honor for me. Yes, I'm quite weird that way! 

Wasn't there even an AGS game that rewarded you with an alternative ending for “finding” all outlandish deaths? I think it was "Return to Civilization"...

[Abisso]

I think a great game needs a great main character. And it has to be designed in a way that you must slowly become more and more empathically connected to him/her/it. So the two of you grow together as the story goes on.