GTD: When challenges become puzzles - and nothing but puzzles

[ambitious6831]

I still remember, as no doubt many here do, getting relentlessly stuck as a kid on the original Kings Quest/Sierra games etc, but it's always something I enjoyed and learned from, and the experiences stick in your head for decades (may just be nostalgia, but more notable than others).

But revisiting the games again now after decades (having forgotten what to do, and resisting the use of a walk-through)... I can't believe how subtle and difficult some of the challenges are? As in, cannot believe a broad range of people could figure them out. Isn't that, well, terrible?

I mean it goes to show how ridiculously dumbed down a lot of titles are now. When I moved away from adventure games, friends would always point out how other genres held 'clever' aspects also: here you have to align some blocks, here you rotate this object until it fits in the key hole, here you need to activate two switches to make the water start pumping.

These 'puzzles' withstood the test of time, and the problems everyone solved as 8 year olds, are still being thrown at 30+ players today. They never pose themselves as: "here's something you may or may not be able to solve", instead it's always: "this will take you a moment or two to figure out, apologies if it takes longer".

What's the point? Just leave it out if it's not supposed to challenge you. I miss the days I'd get stuck on something for hours, days, or even weeks. But I've been simplified for some many years now, I'm not convinced my mind would even tolerate it?

I'd love to see some works on this forum that have the courage to test their audience like the originals did. I tried the new Kings Quest, and it didn't come close in my opinion.

Hopefully there can be more games with actual challenges, rather than toys/puzzles.

If none of that made sense, this video illustrates the point further: https://youtu.be/G59Iwi7_Cp0

_{Edited by Andail: Added GTD to title}

[Cassiebsg]

Well, problem is, most players just want to "steam-line" through the story, so they can quickly finish and move on to the next game. Getting stuck for more than 5-10 minutes on a puzzle will make them close the game and find a new one to play... or run to get hints or a walk-through.

So, since most people want others to play and finish their games, they tend to not do it too hard. Finding the small balance of things is hard.
Personally I like the games that I play to provide a challenge, and I don't mind being stuck for months as I get my enjoyment of figuring it out on my own. But I get split when deciding if a puzzle might be too hard or too easy.

[Destinii]

I think the question is, why do people get stuck?

Is it because of an intelligently designed challenge, or because the game was downright unfair?

For instance, and notably in the KQ entries, if the game becomes unbeatable because you didn't happen to chuck a boot at a cat to save a rat the very first time you saw it - I'd personally call that cheap and unfair.

But I agree there's a difference between getting stuck for the right reasons, and getting forced into these inescapable situations which the original titles get a lot of stick for (although some like this approach).

[cat]

Even back then, I didn't like Sierra games. They were just way to difficult and I didn't enjoy dying. A few years ago I watched a walkthrough video of a KQ game and thought "I could have never figured that out myself back then".
I was always more a LA person.

However, even LA had some difficult puzzles (DotT, MI2) that I wasn't able to figure out without help.

Today, I prefer puzzles that require some thinking but don't have me stuck for too long. In a well crafted game there would be various storylines going on at the same time, so when you get stuck in one place, you can always continue somewhere else.

[NickyNyce]

Back in the day we were forced to be stuck and pain stakingly try to figure things out because we didn't have a walkthrough to find. I too loved thinking about what to do while I was playing outside, at school, eating dinner. That AHA moment when you figured it out was the greatest! As long as the puzzle made some sense, I loved getting stuck. My best memories of adventure games back in the day was when I got stuck, not blowing through easy puzzles. I played them for the challenge of figuring out puzzles and not so much the story. For me, puzzles were always the number one reason I loved adventure games, followed by graphics and story.

Cassiebsg is correct with today's adventure games and designers. But what I don't understand is this...today we have easy to find walkthroughs, more hints, hit space bar to show all interactive objects and hotspots. So I'm not sure why designers take the easy route now. Designers should not be in fear of people not finishing their games anymore.

What we are seeing now is designers being worried that the new generation doesn't have patience. They want the player to experience a fun, semi smooth ride for a few hours of story and puzzles without really getting stuck. Lots of games these days are more like going to the movies then hard core puzzle games...it's sad.

I was thinking about this the other day. I noticed that with today's new technology, it has not made adventure games more fun for me. I prefer the old style crazy graphics, pixels, instead of the...try and look real with stiff 3D modeled characters. I love the warped graphics over the try and make everything look real games of today. I think this is due to the strange puzzles we come across. Strange puzzles seem to fit in better with the crazy pixel graphics more then the new real life ones in my opinion.

[Destinii]

I too loved thinking about what to do while I was playing outside, at school, eating dinner. That AHA moment when you figured it out was the greatest! As long as the puzzle made some sense, I loved getting stuck.

This I can definitely relate to, especially after your mind solves your problems whilst you sleep.

I genuinely think being challenged like that was educational.

[Danvzare]

Cassiebsg is correct with today's adventure games and designers. But what I don't understand is this...today we have easy to find walkthroughs, more hints, hit space bar to show all interactive objects and hotspots. So I'm not sure why designers take the easy route now. Designers should not be in fear of people not finishing their games anymore.

That's something that confuses me as well. Designers complain that if they made a puzzle too hard, then people will just look up a walkthrough online.
That just makes me think that there's no reason to make them easy then. Minimizing the game to look at a walkthrough online, doesn't exactly take you out of the experience. At least not in my opinion, I'll understand if it does for others.
That being said, I don't understand the hardcore gamers gripe with a hint system and that "spacebar that shows all hotspots" function. If you don't want the game to be too easy by using those things, then don't use those things.
People are weird.

Now with all that being said. I prefer easy puzzles. I like getting stuck and then solving it the next day (I find that it breaks up the game nicely). But I don't like being stuck for any longer than that.
Still, it would be nice if someone made an impossibly hard game like an old KQ game.

I was thinking about this the other day. I noticed that with today's new technology, it has not made adventure games more fun for me. I prefer the old style crazy graphics, pixels, instead of the...try and look real with stiff 3D modeled characters. I love the warped graphics over the try and make everything look real games of today. I think this is due to the strange puzzles we come across. Strange puzzles seem to fit in better with the crazy pixel graphics more then the new real life ones in my opinion.

I know what you mean. Aesthetics nowadays have been almost completely thrown out of the window in favour of realism only. That's more of a problem with people always praising graphics, without knowing the definition of that word.

I prefer zany aesthetics over realistic ones. Especially for adventure games.

[Radiant]

I find it's good if the game is not too linear, so that if you're stuck in one puzzle you can do another instead. And if some of the harder puzzles are optional.

...that's probably also something that Lucas Arts was better at than Sierra.

[ambitious6831]

The dead ends are a valid point (http://kingsquest.wikia.com/wiki/Dead_end), just frustrating and feel cheap. But do they not add to the challenge?

Would the games be as difficult without dead ends? If you can't step off the track, you can just run around trying every possibility until something works.

[Radiant]

The dead ends are a valid point (http://kingsquest.wikia.com/wiki/Dead_end), just frustrating and feel cheap. But do they not add to the challenge?

No - they're fake difficulty.

Would the games be as difficult without dead ends?

Certainly. For example, Monkey Island 2 (if not set to lite mode) is a very difficult game, with zero dead ends.

Basically, it's more satisfying to finally solve a puzzle and realize how it made sense all along, than to finally finish something and wonder how on earth you were supposed to know that you shouldn't eat a pie when hungry.

[Destinii]

No - they're fake difficulty.

Agreed.

Certainly. For example, Monkey Island 2 (if not set to lite mode) is a very difficult game, with zero dead ends.

Basically, it's more satisfying to finally solve a puzzle and realize how it made sense all along, than to finally finish something and wonder how on earth you were supposed to know that you shouldn't eat a pie when hungry.

The Monkey Islands were tough, but annoying in my opinion. I don't think the solutions were as logical as Sierra, relying more on crazy/intentionally-ludicrous paths rather than trail of thought. That was part of the comedy of course, but I ended up resorting to trying everything a lot of the time (only to be annoyed when I found out what did work).

I never had that issue with Grim Fandango, which is surprising because that game's mad also.

[Radiant]

The Monkey Islands were tough, but annoying in my opinion. I don't think the solutions were as logical as Sierra,

Really now. Would you like a refresher on the vast amounts of illogical Sierra puzzles? (such as KQV's yeti, Gabriel Knight's fake ID puzzle, the entire good-ending sequence of Laura Bow...)

[Mandle]

Getting stuck for more than 5-10 minutes on a puzzle will make them close the game and find a new one to play... or run to get hints or a walk-through.

I think this is an important point. Back in the '90's there just weren't that many games to play. You went to the actual store and bought one that caught your eye for say $50 or more, and took it home. You felt committed to the game due to the lack of options and the time and money invested in the purchase. Also there were no walkthroughs easily available so you really had no option except to keep trying on your own.

For me this made for a more memorable experience. I will never forget getting stuck in Sam & Max for like 2 months just because I hadn't realized the room with the underground magnets at the mystery shack place could scroll to the right... Grrrrrr... It was frustrating but when I finally found this out it felt so awesome. Not exactly a puzzle but, yeah.

[Radiant]

I think this is an important point. Back in the '90's there just weren't that many games to play. You went to the actual store and bought one that caught your eye for say $50 or more, and took it home. You felt committed to the game due to the lack of options and the time and money invested in the purchase. Also there were no walkthroughs easily available so you really had no option except to keep trying on your own.

Yep. I remember opening King's Quest I in a hex editor to try and find the name of that #&*$&#$ gnome. Of course, not being a native speaker, I had no idea what his fairy tale was called in English in the first place.

[CaptainD]

I think this is an important point. Back in the '90's there just weren't that many games to play. You went to the actual store and bought one that caught your eye for say $50 or more, and took it home. You felt committed to the game due to the lack of options and the time and money invested in the purchase. Also there were no walkthroughs easily available so you really had no option except to keep trying on your own.

For me this made for a more memorable experience. I will never forget getting stuck in Sam & Max for like 2 months just because I hadn't realized the room with the underground magnets at the mystery shack place could scroll to the right... Grrrrrr... It was frustrating but when I finally found this out it felt so awesome. Not exactly a puzzle but, yeah.

I agree, it was a completely different dynamic.  I do find myself wondering how many games I loved growing up would be ones I get frustrated with and put to one side quickly nowadays.  It took my sister and I nearly 2 years to complete Zak McKraken would you belief!  (Immense sense of anticlimax when we did - "what are we going to do now?  There's no point playing it any more...")

For me the puzzles should always fit in with the narrative flow of the game.  If they don't it does indeed feel that they've simply been put there for the sake of it.  As for illogical puzzles... anyone else think many of the puzzles in the Secret Files games were pretty obscure?

[Babar]

Through random traversal of the Internet that I can't replicate just now, I came across this interesting article that seems very relevant to this discussion:
Http://www.filfre.net/2015/07/the-14-deadly-sins-of-graphic-adventure-design/

Puzzle design is a thing that very much...puzzles me , and often I've contemplated switching them out for some completely different mechanic.

[Mandle]

Nice article and very useful for devs!

I'll just correct the link here so it works better:

http://www.filfre.net/2015/07/the-14-deadly-sins-of-graphic-adventure-design/

[NickyNyce]

Maybe its just me, but I do wonder why there are so many detective adventure games. It's not like in order to make an adventure game the character needs to be a detective. Adventure games can have the lead character be just about anyone, or anything that's got a brain and limbs. Maybe it's because I'm old and have played so many of them, but when I see the...You're a detective, I do kind of get a bit turned off. I'm not bad mouthing any detective games in development because I know there are some, and many of them pretty darn good, and everyone has their own tastes, but I've seem to have grown away from them.

I don't know if it's the classic hat and coat, detective office, pencil and pad, questioning of people and suspects, but I feel that it's been done so many times. I've not really heard anyone else ever mention this before. I have heard many people say they love adventure games for the story, and it makes me wonder if just changing the bad guy is enough to keep them happy when it comes to detective games. Maybe I'm just an old fart.

No offense to anyone making them right now. I've just always wondered why there's so many of them, especially considering adventure games can work just as well with almost any kind of story you can think of.

[Mandle]

Maybe its just me, but I do wonder why there are so many detective adventure games.

Some reasons I can think of, and I was just thinking of this earlier today in regards to mystery fiction, are that a detective character does not require a complex or lengthy call-to-adventure section. They get a call and BAM they're on the case. The game or book starts quickly and you are immediately in the action. Also, the character's motivation to continue to solve the mystery, even when things get hairy, is automatic: It's their job.

Look at Agatha Christie stories or Shelock Holmes: There is usually very little preamble explaining how the main character came to be involved in the mystery, perhaps a paragraph telling of how the police or an involved person contacted the detective, and then the reader (or player in that case of a detective game) can get started on what they came for: the mystery and how it is solved.

So, it's more like one of those roller-coasters that goes from 0-100 instantly out of the gate, instead of taking the long, slower haul up the first big hill.

I like all kinds of stories but yeah, sometimes the quick-start is exactly what I'm looking for. And detective stories do that pretty well.

Cheers for reading!

[Stupot]

To add to what Mandle said, I think detective games are the easy option to avoid the "Why don't they just call the police?" problem that a lot of games and films fall into. There always has to be some kind of reason why the protagonist can't just get their phone out and get someone better equipped to handle the body count. Or if you can call the police they are just downright uncooperative. At least in a detective game you are the police. Or if not, you're an ex-cop with a healthy rollerdex and a hankerin' for justice.