The biggest Adventure Game ever

[JpGames]

Which is, in your opinion, the biggest adventure game ever(comercial or not).

By biggest, in this case, i meant:

- Number of rooms.
- Number of puzzles.
- Number of items.
- Playable time.
- Cutscenes.

... and so on.

And, also, can a adventure game be "too big" to be good?

Thanks in advance for yours opinions.

[Crimson Wizard]

I will just leave this here:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=52024.0

[ManicMatt]

Heh, yeah that convo has been done already I'm afraid!

Although I'm quite the opposite. I prefer short experiences - I'm more likely to stick around to see the ending!

[Stupot]

I like shorter ones too, but I try to squeeze a big one in every few months
But in terms of games... I measure the length of a game in days or weeks, even if Steam says it only took x number of hours. For example Whispered World took me two weeks to get through, playing for an hour or two each day.

[Radiant]

And, also, can a adventure game be "too big" to be good?

Absolutely. It's possible for a game to start dragging, to the point where fatigue sets in and a player thinks "isn't this over yet?"  This is personal, of course; to me, the main offenders are Ultima VII Serpent Isle (technically an RPG but it plays mostly like an adventure), The Colonel's Bequest, and of course King's Quest V.

- Number of rooms.

Probably not the most useful metric, but Snowball has about seven thousand rooms.

[JpGames]

I was searching for the playable time for snowball but i did not found nothing. Any reference?

And, also, can a adventure game be "too big" to be good?

Absolutely. It's possible for a game to start dragging, to the point where fatigue sets in and a player thinks "isn't this over yet?"  This is personal, of course; to me, the main offenders are Ultima VII Serpent Isle (technically an RPG but it plays mostly like an adventure), The Colonel's Bequest, and of course King's Quest V.

- Number of rooms.

Probably not the most useful metric, but Snowball has about seven thousand rooms.

[mkennedy]

With interactive fiction games you may be able to judge size by the total number of words used.

[ollj]

search for the youTube video "awesome per second" to learn how size doesn't matter, even for slower paced adventure games.

it is an art to keep a story focused and to the point.
cut-scenes do not make a good game, because they defy any interactivity, especially per-rendered videos.
A slightly too long exposition/dialog can always cause a disconnect between player and the character that is being played. it is often better to keep prepositional sentences as short as possible, leaving room for immersive head canons, as its easier to immerse into simpler characters/locations that develop over time than to read/see a characters/locations autobiographical history  upfront.

when it comes to puzzle-design i learned that there are some important things in pacing the puzzles, longer puzzles can easily destroy all suspension of disbelief . Action games work only with puzzles (often as simple as finding a hidden key somewhere) that are just as fast paced. Suspension of disbelief is VERY important in adventure games, because they tend to be NOT "slice of life" stories that anyone can easily identify with. they tend to be unique situation-stories of a apecial person in a special situation.