Hey all,
I want to ask you guys for help.
See, I'm currently starting my graduation project at game design college, and together with a friend we are planning to put together an adventure game. I think we have a pretty good story already and we both love adventure games to death and are quite proficient with AGS, but the problem is that we are doing the Masters programme, so it's not enough to just deliver a polished game, we have to do something innovative with it, something that has never been done before and really adds something to the genre. (no pressure!)
So we've been thinking on this, and we have a couple of ideas, but we're afraid they're not strong enough. They may be things we've rarely seen in adventure games, or at least not in AGS games, but for this project we really need something convincing, so even people who are not adventure game connaisseurs will sit up and take notice.
Barefoot already started a
good thread on what our preferences are for great adventure games, but there we're discussing the things already on the table, the tools we already have in our belts. I would love to discuss with you guys ways we could push the genre forward, really come up with something new, something we could turn into a module for others to use aswell. Something that fundamentally alters the way we interact with adventure games. A way to put adventure games back on the map!
So my question to you is this:
what would be a feature you have always wanted to see in an adventure game, but have rarely/never encountered (yet)?And I don't mean things like 'a three-legged clown' or 'a dance verb', I'm talking entire systems, things that affect the way you control or experience adventure games.
For starters, here are a few things we were thinking of:
- a dialog engine that frees you from standing still and talking stiffly, where you can walk around and mess with stuff during the conversation, where you can involve other NPC's in the conversation or even just walk away.
- a game where [jackbauer] events occur.. in realtime. [/jackbauer] (although arguably The Last Express already did that)
- with the renaissance of the genre on the iPhone, we're seeing a lot of 'classic' adventure games, but what about multitouch? What about the accelerometer? GPS even? The potential for all-new type puzzles is enormous. (only problem is AGS does not run on iPhone (yet)!)
- my friend is an interaction designer, so he is very interested in finding a new way to control the game, besides mouse or keyboard. Again, this could tie into the touchscreen thing.
- iPhone games are typically games you play for a brief time while you are out and about. Adventure games take time and often a lot of reading to get invested in. How could we adapt storytelling to better fit into a pickup-and-play model? Should we even try?
What do you guys think?